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LIFE 



ROBERT BURNS. 

jP GyXOCKHART, 



LL.B. 



Of him who walked in glory and in joy, 
Behind his plough upon the mountain side- 

WORDSWORTH. 



ESSAY ON HIS WRITINGS, 



PREPARED FOR THIS EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 

WILLIAM STODART, No. G COURTLANDT STREET. 

C. S. FRANCIS, 252 BROADWAY. 

SOLD ALSO BY H. C. SLEIGHT, AND WHITE, OALLAHBR AND WHITS. 

1831. 






^t^^ 



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3 



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" Entered according" to act of Cong-ress, in the year 1831, 
by William Stodart, in the office of the Clerk of the Southern 
District of New York." 



Qift 
MR. HUTCHESON. 

-^0 N''06 



Vi^ 



SLEIGHT AND ROBINSON, PRINTERS. 



(\ 






AN ESSAY 



ON THE 

WRITINGS OF BURNS, 
FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



It is a circumstance not a little remarkable, that one who 
consents to approach so difficult a subject as that of the fame 
of Burns, should have it in his power to state, that hitherto, 
almost to a man, his biographers, critics, and reviewers, 
have been either his relations, personal friends, or Scots- 
men.* Supposing that these persons were all remarkable 
for inflexible impartiality, dispassionate judg-ment, and cool- 
ness of temperament, it must still be allowed that they 
were men, and therefore could not be totally unaffected 
by the incidents of consang-uinity, intimacy, or nativity. 
In any view of the case, it is not totally immaterial to be en- 
abled to say that if this subject be handled here with infe- 
rior skill, it is discussed on neutral ground. Generals, who 
would have a thcroug-h knowledg-e of what is doing- in all 
parts of the field, usually ascend an eminence to detach 
themselves from the obscurity which the smoke produces. 
Perhaps there could not exist a more fit place to discuss the 
nature and extent of the poetical claims of Burns, than on 
Nvestern g-round, standing here, as we do, uninfluenced by the 
strong biases so well known to exist, on behalf of illustrious 
names, in all large and old societies. It may also be safely 

* These writers are Gilbert Burns, Thomson, Dr. Currie, Cro- 
mek, Walker, Peterkin, Heron, Scott, Jeffrey, Wordswortli, Camp- 
bell, and Wilson. 

It need not be asked if the writers of the articles respecting Burns, 
found in the Edinburgh Review, are Scottish ; those in the auar- 
tcrly were written by Sir Walter Scott. 

A 



IV ESSAY. 

assumed as a position, that even literature, the filtering^ 
stone of human opinion, requires itself to be occasionally 
purified. 

A cause, argued in the same manner, sometimes issues in 
a different result when carried into another court. A change 
of air sometimes effects in the constitution of a patient, and 
pari passu in a creed, what no 

" poppies, mandragorag, 
Or drowsy syrups," 

could. At the same time, it is devoutly to be desired that it 
may not be inferred, from these premises, that literature and 
good taste are about to receive a deadly shock from the per- 
petration of heresies irreconcilable with their canons ; these 
prefatory remarks are introduced simply to prepare the 
mind of the reader for the discussion of the con as well as 
the pro on the subject of the poetical merits of Robert 
Burns, which has at least the promise of novelty. 

It is unnecessary to detain the reader longer, except to 
say that a preface to the republication of a volume of such lite- 
rary importance as a new life of Burns, seemed to be natural- 
ly demanded, and that it appeared incumbent on one who was 
about to add any thing to a subject on which much had been 
already said, if he could not enlighten by new trains of 
thought, at least to show that his interference was not alto- 
gether idle or ostentatious ; but a candid perusal of this no- 
tice will evince, that it does not aspire to critical profundity, 
nor is it claimed to be worthy of being placed by the side of 
the other papers already appended to the works of Burns. 

As there are sceptics on all topics and creeds, so there ex- 
ist questioners of the solidity of the pretensions preferred for 
Burns by his reviewers and countrymen. And even where 
such pretensions are admitted in part, it has been contended 
that, although he may be allowed to be a good Scottish poet, 
yet, from the very circumstance of the Scots being his na- 
tive language, he is very naturally, a priori, disqualified 
from aniving at the same felicity and skill in the uge of Eng- 



ESSAY. 
llsh, and more especially when it is considered that the cojna 
verborum is one of the essential qualities of a great poet. 

It is further asserted that all his biographers, commenta- 
tors, and reviewers, as before stated, have been chiefly ifno*^ 
altogether of his own country. 

It is also said that his fame has never been so great in Eng"- 
land as his admirers and eulogists have claimed for him ; that 
his centenary has not yet been completed (that ordeal to which, 
by common consent, all cases of this sort have been referred) ; 
nay, that, dating- from his death, which was premature, only 
thirty-five years of it have elapsed ; that foreig-n translations 
of his works have not yet appeared, to such an extent as would 
justify the claims of his country and friends ; and that yet, 
with reg'ard to writers of a more recent date, (Scott and By- 
ron,) a very ample translation of their works into the differ- 
ent languages of Europe has g-iven to their fame its desired 
apex ; that the Scots, being" a highly national people, would, 
to carry a point on behalf of a popular native writer, at any 
time move heaven and earth, and that Burns has propitiated 
their favor by the patriotic tendencies and subject matter of 
many of his productions : that his works are, for the greater 
part, not pleasing- to the Eng-lish reader without a glossary ; 
that to employ this is irksome ; and that his most universally 
celebrated productions are altogether English, and more- 
over very few in number ; and lastly, that one must have been 
born a Scotsman to relish with gout the writings of Burns. 

If the question relative to the nature and extent of the po- 
etical claims of Burns were to be argued as a disputed point, 
at this hour, and in the manner put in the foregoing 
objections, yet, under judicial impulses, we should feel 
inclined, for ourselves, although they arc candidly placed 
before the reader, to treat these sceptical battalia, in 
their full amount, as little better than ingenious specula- 
tions, or a species of tour deforce, and not entitled to grave 
refutation. Still is there enough about the array to deserve 
notice, which may be condensed to two or three special 



^^ ESSAY. 

points. First : What, in reality have the biographers and 

countrymen of Burns claimed for him 7 

it is not claimed for Burns, that he wrote an elaborate tra- 
S^^y, or an epic poem, or even a connected treatise on any 
given subject ; what is in reality demanded for him by his 
judicious friends, cannot perhaps be better stated, than in 
the lang-uag-e of a most eloquent writer in the Edinburgh 
Review : 

" Burns first came upon the world as a prodig-y ; and was, 
in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with 
loud, vag-ue, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding- into 
censure and neglect ; till his early and most mournful death 
again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as 
there was nothing now to be done, and much to be spoken, 
has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, ' the 
nine' days have long since elapsed; and the very continu- 
ance of this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. 
Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, asyearspassed 
by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own 
intrinsic merits, and may now be well nigh shorn of that ca- 
sual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but 
as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth 
century. Let it not be objected that he did little ; he did 
much, if we consider where, and how. If the work performed 
was small, we must remember he had his very materials to 
discover ; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the de- 
sert, where no eye but his had guessed its existence ; and 
we may almost say, that with his own hands he had to con- 
struct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in the 
deepest obscurity, without help, without instruction, without 
model, or with models only of the meanest sort. An edu- 
cated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arse- 
nal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines 
which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest 
time ; and he works accordingly, with a strength borrowed 
from all past ages. How different is his state, who stands on 
the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must 



ESSAY. VII 

be Bt( jrmed, or remain forever shut against him ! His means 
are the commonest and rudest ; tiie mere work done is no 
mea£;ure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam-eng-ine 
may remove mountains ; but no dwarf will hew them down 
with the pickaxe : and he must be a Titan that hurls them 
abroad with his arms. 

"I.t is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born 
in a,n age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in 
a ccmdition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it 
acoamplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure 
of continual bodily toil, nay of penury, and desponding ap- 
prehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but 
«uch knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the 
rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard of beauty, 
he sinks not under all these impediments. Through the 
fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his eagle eye dis- 
cerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows 
into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellec- 
tual expertness. Impelled by the irrepressible movement 
of his inward spirit, he struggles forward into the general 
view, and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the 
fruit of his labors, a gift which time has pronounced impe- 
rishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudging child- 
hood and youth was by far the kindliest of his whole life ; 
^nd that he died in his thirty-seventh year ; and then ask if 
it he strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small ex- 
tent, or that his genius attained no mastery of his art? 
Alas ! his sun shone as through a tropical tornado ; and the 
pale shadows of death eclipsed it at noon ! Shrowded in 
Buch baleful vapors, the genius of Burns was never seen in 
-clear azured splendor enlightening the world. But some 
beams from it did, by fits, pierce through ; and it tinted 
those clouds with rainbow and orient colors, into a glory and 
stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder 
-and tears !" 



'K 



^*^* ESSAY. 

It is very true that many of the commentaries of the pub^ 
lishers, biographers, and reviewers of Burns, bear the marks' 
of unequivocal eulog-y ; and that the verdicts of his analyti- 
cal judges and critics do not uniformly agree. But whoever 
looks at the text of other poets of nature, and then at the an- 
notations which smother it, will not marvel at such discre- 
pancies ; and as to the laudatory inclinings, if it be consi- 
dered that the public voice of Scotland had unanimously 
been raised on behalf of the poet, even in deafening" roar, 
in meeting-s select, literary, legislative, deliberative, and po- 
pular, this echo from those interested in the sale of the works 
of Burns falls rather short of what might have been ex- 
pected. One of the most important criticisms (important be- 
cause it was early, and indubitably impartial) pronounced 
upon the poetry of the Caledonian bard, was given by the 
celebrated premier, William Pitt. 

At the late Lord Liverpool's table, soon after Burns' death, 
Mr. Pitt said, " I can think of no verse since Shakspeare's, 
that has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from 
nature." (Page 237.) One of the most eloquent English, 
statesmen ever heard in debate, here runs the parallel be- 
tween Burns and the great Bard of Avon. The next favora- 
ble eminent English authority is that of Lord Byron, ex- 
pressed with brevity and decision. (Page 314.) These are 
followed by the concurrent decisions of Campbell and Sir 
Walter Scott— (315 to 318.) That thelatter, as authorities, 
are of less weight, on national grounds solely, must be ob- 
vious to every reader. At the same time, intrinsically, they 
are as unobjectionable every way as if they were English, 
French, or American. 

In answering the question, what is claimed for Burns ? it 
is obvious that justice demands, that in estimating the pro- 
ductions of genius, the abstract idea of quantity should be 
utterly dismissed. 

Who would disparage Shakspeare for his lioness-VikQ bar- 
j^ reaness 7 Or who would place Lopez de Vega above him for 



ESSAY. IX 

his rabbit fecundity 1 How many ship loads of " poetical 
trifles," "poetical effusions," metrical essays, and collections 
of poems, dedicated and undedicated, critically noticed and 
unnoticed, would be equitably required to poise that single 
production of a g-iant pen, Gray's Eleg-y7 or our bard's 
"Scots wha hae," &c. What architect would divert the 
admiration of the spectator from the Temples of Jupiter 
and Minerva, and claim it for the Pyramids? Or what 
critical eye would, while inspiring- delight from the pro- 
portions of the Venus de Medicis, or the Apollo Belvidere, 
wander to the colossal but comparatively inelegant figure 
of the Elephant? 

In divinity, the folios of Gill enjoy as profound a tranquil- 
lity as their author does, many years since entombed:— 
while the Meditations of Hervey, and the Night Thoughts of 
Young, in duodecimo, are found in every polite orthodox 
library. It would be proper without doubt to estimate fairly 
the regrets which have been poured forth so copiously, and, 
as every one believes, sincerely, over the early decease of 
Burns, and the consequent loss of his continuous literary 
labors. But who can truly desire that the poet of nature 
should have continued to write until he had no readers for 
his last production? Who can answer, that he would have 
gone on to rise in interest ? Might he not have gone on to- 
wards the climax attained by INIartinus Scriblerus ? Would 
it have been desirable to have found him throwing crude, 
diluted water-gruel stuff of poetry, generated by the lees of 
Port, Burgundy, Champagne, late hours, and the carbon 
of sea coal, by the side of that balsamic nectar-like 
menstruum, which the green fields, the genial warmth 
of the blessed sun, and the pure air, teeming from the fresh 
earth, concocted in a genial brain, in the kail-yard, or behind 
the plough at Mossgiel? Was it indeed desirable that Burns 
should, because he had acquired " fair fame,'' have gone on 
to have beaten his inch of precious metal into the length and 
breadth necessary for covering an acre of ground? The 



X ESSAY. 

poets of olden times wrote " because they were moved,'^ axiS 
dictated from the overflowing's of nature ; but do not the: 
moderns throw out bars of bullion to their first customers,, 
and do not later comers receive only paper ! 

It has been justly remarked, that the earliest productions 
of many eminent writers have been the most successfuL 
Fielding's Tom Jones, and his Amelia have been respectively- 
compared to the rising- and the setting- sun. Whatever Cer- 
vantes wrote besides Don Q,uixote, has in the wide world's- 
estimate never compared with it. Le Sag-e did not add ma- 
terially to the fame of the writer of Gil Bias, in placing- by ita 
side Le Diable Boiteaux. Miss Burney's Evelina evinces- 
more vig-or than any subsequent production from her pen» 
Paradise Lost was a more successful poem than Paradise- 
Regained. Campbell has put forth nothing- latterly which 
even approaches the combined refinement, vig-or, and 
pathos, of his " Pleasures of Hope," " Wounded Hussar," and 
"Exile of Erin." Many persons maintain there is more 
sweetness and power in the Childe Harold of Lord Byron, 
than in any of his other works. Opinions are advanced in 
favor of the Spy, as the most vigorous of Cooper's novels 
And there is little doubt that the earlier writings of Washing- 
ton Irving have decidedly the most racy points about them. 
There appears to be a limited period in the life of man for 
the production of chef d'ceuvres and master pieces. After 
this period has passed, the trumpet may be sounded, and the 
word of command may be given, but the troops will not rush 
to the charge : they halt, take breath, and do their business 
leisurely and mechanically. 

It is asserted that " the countrymen of Burns have been too 
partial." 

It appears as natural that the first honors of a poet should 
spring from his country, as it does that light should enter at 
the window and not at the door. 

A false conclusion is evidently attempted to be drawn from 
the admitted fact of Scottish nationality : but how in reality 



ESSAY. 



XI 



do the particulars of Burns' case stand 1 First the poet him- 
self doubted and distrusted his own powers from the begin- 
ning- : he blushes at the sight of his verses in a magazine. 
He retreats behind, and proposes to himself, as beacons of 
excellence, such writers as Ferguson, Allan Ramsay, 
and others scarcely known abroad, except from the pages 
of Burns' biographers; and, observes the poet of Scot- 
land, with profound modesty, " Doctor Blacklock belonged 
to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to 
hope." 

And when a change in his literary prospects justified his 
appearance in Edinbuigh ; and when he was bidden to the 
banquets of the wise, the learned, and the great, he was in 
reality undergoing his fearful probation ; for, during the en- 
joyment of these honors, he was "conned" and "noted:" 
there were conditions annexed to this beneficial contract ; and 
Burns on his part delivered himself, to be sifted, catechised, 
and weighed by golden scales, on which were marked grains 
as well as pennyweights. The Scotch characteristic prudence 
did not forsake the Blairs, the Walkers, the Ramsays, and the 
Blacklocks, his examiners : but he came from this ordeal like 
gold from the hands of the assayer. As proof indubitable, 
the second edition of Burns' Poems came out during this visit 
to the Scottish Athens — came out triumphantly, under the 
very eye of the Gamaliels of that day. Besides, the cry opened 
by the pack of malcontents respecting the manners and mo- 
rals of Burns proves that there were enough ready then as 
there is always to be found in every country and in every 
age, to repress rising talent, and to sink extraordinary pre- 
tensions to the common level; not by the fair, stx'aight-for_ 
ward and manly course of showing professional inability, 
but by the thousand times repeated destestable trick, of 
stabbing the poet through the man. How many victims may 
be numbered of this Anthropophagi, this Polyphemus-like 
policy? Pope was ridiculed for personal deformity, and 
dubbed A P E, by Dennis, who was a barnacle only stuck to 
1 



^^* ESSAY. 

the planks of the poet's fame ; nay, he was by one envious 
personag-e threatened with a sound horsewhipping-— because 
the world chose to admire him. Byron's infelicity in 
the connubial state was probably marred, and his exile 
effected by the same cause. Is it necessary to recount what 
the malig-nity of his enemies did for Columbus, the dispenser 
of a new world to an ung-rateful throne? or to introduce the 
cases of Milton, Creig-hton, and a thousand others, who paid 
"the regular tax on merit,"— the censure and hatred of co- 
temporaries 7 But to return to Burns : it may be well in- 
ferred, that had those of his cotemporaries who did attack 
him on other g-rounds, considered him vulnerable on the side 
of his claimed elevation as a poet of hig-h rank, they would 
have carried on the war in that quarter — as there his sensi- 
bilities, after all, must have been the keenest. 

We now arrive at the discussion of by far the most im- 
posing" of the objections to the pretensions of Burns, viz. : as 
founded upon the dialectical lang-viage in which he wrote. We 
are compelled to believe that Burns did not himself feel the 
same freedom in composing- in Eng-lish as in the Scottish 
dialect, because he himself tells us so. "These English 
songs," says he, " gravel me to death. I have not that com- 
mand of the language that I have of my native tongue :" and 
again, " so much for namby-pamby. I may after all, try my 
hand at it in Scots verse. There I am always most at home." 
(^Page 257 of this work.) But there is other collateral evidence 
to be found in his letters. Doubtless, had all his compositions 
been as acceptable to an English ear as his last, and which 
has been pronounced his best, viz., " Scots wha hae wi' Wal- 
lace bled," the works of Burns must have had a larger circu- 
lation in England, in Europe, and in the United States. 

The general reader is impatient of any kind of glos- 
sary : the very act of reference is a task reluctantly per- 
formed, even with the propelling motive of subsequent grati- 
fication ; and whether this glossary be placed at the end of 
the book, at the top of the page, as in orthoepical dictionaries, 



ESSAY. xm 

or at the bottom of it, as in some editions of Burns' works, it 
entails any where an effort which interferes with the indo- 
lence and neutrality of the largest number of readers, and 
particularly of the unlearned ; and the difficulty is without 
remedy. You may translate from a foreig-n lang-uag-e ; but 
a translation would hardly be seriously attempted from a 
dialectical production. There are persons who profess to 
admire the Scots dialect, who are not natives ; but may not 
this taste be formed in the same manner as any other of an 
artificial nature, or be nothing- more than a genuflexion 
conceded to fashion, and the impossibility of not being- 
pleased with any part or parcel of the works of a successful 
poet 7 

But whatever degree of evidence exists as to the assumed 
fact of the dialect of Burns having abridged the limits of his 
fame ; otherwise, it is pretty certain that the adherence to 
the dialect accelerated the "roar of applause" which attend- 
ed his early productions, and especially the satirical ones, 
among his own countrymen. But this by no means subtracts 
a particle from his actual and intrinsic greatness. The qua- 
lity OF THE THOUGHTS must decide, and decide solely, upon 
the calibre of the writer in whatever language or dialect 
written or spoken. And the fact is at least asserted in the 
pages of the following work, that Burns has the merit of be- 
ing the pioneer for his country's dialect : that after the print- 
ing of his poems, a taste was created for the Scottish dialect 
amongst English readers generally; and it may be without 
much risk asserted, that Scott introduced Scottish provin- 
cialisms into the Waverley novels upon this precedent. 
Whatever has been said upon this subject generally, has been 
best said by Burns himself— see page 257. Perhaps, in re- 
nouncing the separation of the Scots idiom from the English 
in lyrics, he is right. Often, by the introduction of the Scot- 
tish dialect, euphonical effect is increased; and from a care- 
ful examination of the glossary, it is found that the elision 



XIV ESSAY. 

of the consonants, as in the cases of /rae, (from,) wV (with,) 
o', (of,) is frequent. 

None can feel more sensibly the fact than the writer of this, 
that the English language is rendered infinitely less desira- 
ble, as the vehicle of musical sounds, by the harshness of its 
construction, in reference to the number of consonants with 
which it abounds, and the strong, and, to a foreign ear, 
revolting, and frequent sound sound of S". This remark is 
however not new, nor put forth as such. 

It may be observed, that notwithstanding the foregoing 
reply to objectors to the high rank amongst poets, claimed 
for Burns by his countrymen, still some of the objections have 
not, been fairly met at all,but at any rate, that the gordian knot 
is in statu quo, viz., the question what precise station among 
poets shall be assigned to Burns 1 That his centenary pro- 
bation is not yet completed certainly cannot be denied; 
and we shall be content with further remarking, that much 
farther off from the completion of this period, stand Byron 
and Scott. In reply to the allegation, that the reprint of the 
works of Burns has not been so great as that of the works of 
Byron and Scott, it is difficult to ascertain the fact demon- 
strably ; and as the assertion admits not of positive proof, it 
must therefore rest for what it is : but, if true, it may be 
accounted for in several ways, without disparagement to 
Burns. The numbers of the reading public throughout Eu- 
rope since Burns' time have most astonishingly increased, 
not to say even multiplied ; and therefore the demand for re- 
prints would naturally absorb new productions in preference 
to older works : secondly, the subject matter of the works of 
Scott and Byron falls in better with the prevalent taste of 
modern Europe, without reference to the rank of the respec- 
tive productions ; not to insist further on the almost insur- 
mountable diflBculty of effecting a competent translation of 
Scottish poetry into European languages; and especially 
such poetry as that of Burns. It is asked, " What precise 
station among the poets shall be assigned to Burns ? " They 



ESSAY. XV 

who incline to the ultra side of the question, say that he is 
unhesitating-ly to be placed in the first class, viz., to take 
rank with Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Tasso, 
and Camoens, "not," it is said, "on account of any single 
actual pei-forxnance of Burns having" paralleled in greatness, 
magnitude, and elaborateness, the chef d'ceuvre of either of 
these great masters ; but that the whole chain of his produc- 
tions, (to employ a lawyer's metaphor,) is so bright and strong, 
and the quality of each link is so fine, and the steel of such a 
temper, as to give evidence, that, had his circumstances and 
habits of life admitted of continuous attention, as well as of 
fitful ardor, neither an epic poem, nor a tragedy of the very 
first character, would have been found beyond the compass 
of those herculean powers evidenced by what he has 
achieved." 

To this it is replied, that were it fair to claim distinction 
for any writer conjecturally and prospectively, viz., to give 
him reputation in advance for what he might do, on the score 
of what he has done. Burns would be entitled to this award — 
what he has done is done so well, as to render it dif&cult to 
say whether he has, in the same departments of composition, 
even an equal. It is not too much to say, that in many of his 
pieces the most cynical have not found room to lay a finger 
on a fault. In pathos, closeness to nature, sweetness, and 
simplicity, (which latter quality includes the idea of strength,) 
he is great among the greatest. And were this the place to 
give a critique on his writings, or had not this been already 
done, this were easily shown. But if reputation in advance 
were claimed for Homer, it could not be yielded ; because 
uncertainty and variation attend the productions of the first 
writers that ever lived. Who could bear, immediately after 
being excited by the Iliad, to take up the Odyssey? What 
reader could ever be satisfied with the coldness of Paradise 
Regained, after having had his imagination heated by Para- 
disc Lost 1 Who, then, could or would take the responsibi- 

1* 



XVI ESSAY. 

lity of answering- for what Burns might have written, on the 
grounds of what he has written? 

The writer of the masterly article on Burns, in theJEdin- 
burg-h Review, No. 96, pronounces the poet to be strongest 
in his song's. 

Taking- up this for authority, it could not place him, if he 
graduated from this prominent point of excellence, so high 
as his ultra advocates would claim. It is very much to be 
doubted, if the highest poetical rank could be claimed for 
any lyrical writer, however eminent. Anacreon seems to 
take high ground in this class. But may not something of 
this be set down to his exceedingly chaste and high-wrought 
style, (as well as to his other characteristics,) and which 
seems to place his productions on the verge of another order 
of composition, and to bring them very close to the rigid and 
subdued beauties of Virgil 7 They who excite in us emotions 
of sublimity, who achieve poetical greatness, carry us be- 
yond the joys of sense — they transport us into the world of 
metaphysics, and of spirits ; they raise us up to Heaven, 
carry us down to hell — provide fellow-beings in both places — 
and give them passions and employments suited to their situ- 
ation there. By the very contemplation of such existences, 
we add a sort of dignity to our being ; our thoughts are 
drawn out of ourselves, diverted from all common places ; 
and such as are competent to this task, of elevating us in 
our own estimation and consciousness, which these flights 
of abstraction, somehow or other effect ; such writers may 
be called great. Many of Burns' pieces look this way ; but 
some complete fabric of metaphysics seems to be wanting. 
The porticos, vestibules and corridors appear to be provided; 
but time and fate deprived us, it would seem, of the great 
temple itself, which should have lifted its lofty head and 
joined itself to the clouds. 

Homer, with the hand of a giant, mingles gods with men, 
shows us Olympus, awful Jupiter, the jealous and revenge- 
ful Juno, the sage and untiring Minerva, the beautiful anS 



ESSAY. XYU 

voluptuous Apollo, and the Venus who from the sky ravished 

the imag-ination. 

Virg"il makes us accompany his hero into Elysium ; to 
converse with the sages of the primeval ages ; or leads us 
down to Tartarus to wander amongst unhappy ghosts, 

Ariosto decoys us by the truth of his realities into all the 
wildness of magic and chivalry. 

Tasso martials "helm and hauberk," knight and steed, 
Saracen and Christian, on the hill of Calvary, or parades 
them in the garden of Gethsemane: thus engrafting reli- 
gious faith upon heroic emprize. 

Milton compasses all space, and demands the universe for 
the scene of his mighty drama. His personages are nothing 
less than the Godhead, the Savior, archangels, burning 
seraphims, myriads of angels ; the arch destroyer and his 
legions; and man, such as we cannot now behold him. 

Shakspeare peoples the air, the water, and the earth, with 
fantastic forms and shapes, engendered by his fancy ; — from 
the tiny gossamer fairy, as big as agate on alderman's fore- 
finger, to the heavy, huge, creeping Caliban ; subjects them 
to laws of his own framing, and fills the mind of man with 
sage aphorisms drawn from the conduct of " airy nothings ;" 
or, arising in tragic majesty, selects some mighty lord of the 
earth, sitting in the chair of power, nodding command to 
his satraps, and folding his arms in security and self-suffi- 
ciency — him he pinions by the Titanian force of some master- 
passion ; poisons his food, snatches from him "nature's sweet 
restorer balmy sleep," and fills his imagination with hideous 
phantasms, until, like the wild beast in the toils, he rushes 
with his eyes wide open into the world of spirits. In all these 
instances, common affairs of wassailing and the wine cup, 
the scented rose, the soft madrigal, and the "lascivious 
pleasing of a lute;" the sounds of the sackbut and "dulci- 
mer" are left far behind in the blue and fading distance. To 
make our claims to greatness solid, we must, it appears, 
either cast into a new mould, and intensely elevate what we 



Xviii ESSAY. 

see around us, cover the " thick rotundity o' the globe " with 
imaginary creations, or go into other spheres in search of 
new modes of being. 

If such are the indispensable conditions to the occupancy 
of the first rank among poets, many besides Burns, for whom 
it has been claimed, must be content to be established in the 
second : and it is there we place him. 

It remains to speak of Mr. Lockhart's execution of his task. 
There appears to be a singularity of character and arrange- 
ment about these successive biographies of Burns. It has 
been thought necessary that each of them should be complete 
in itself. Hence the reader has to travel over some old 
ground, in order to get at the new parts of the road. Mr. 
Lockhart has himself evidently been conscious of this in the 
following passage : 

"As to the earlier part of Burns' history, Currie and 
Walker appear to have left little unexplored: it is chiefly 
concerning the incidents of his closing years, that their ac- 
counts have been supposed to admit of a supplement." (Pre- 
fatory notice, page 22.) Hence some of the matter found in 
Currie's Life of Burns, owing to the plan of the work being 
as above described, is repeated in the beginning of Mr. 
Lockhart's new biography : still, however, justice requires 
that it be stated, that by the side of this, even in the earlier 
pages of the new life, is found novel matter, and sometimes 
an enlargement of the old. In the advanced pages, the fresh- 
ness and excellent quality of the materiel are every where 
discernible: and Mr. Lockhart's distinguishing trait, as 
Burns' biographer, appears to be, that he was not of the opi- 
nion that, 

" The social condition of the individual of whom he was 
treating, could seem to place him at such a distance from the 
exalted reader, that ceremony might be discarded with him, 
and his memory sacrificed as it were almost without com- 
punction." And accordingly his approaches towards, and 
handling of, Burns' vulnerable points, are evidently made 



ESSAY. XIX 

with the tenderness and forbearance of a brother; indeed, he 
exhibits more delicacy than even Burns' brother Gilbert. 

Station in life may perhaps partly account for this, and it 
may be in part accounted for from the period of time elapsed, 
which, as it g-oes on to leave the peculiarities of the man fur- 
ther in the distance, increases the delight and estimation en- 
tertained for the poet. The letters of Burns interspersed in 
this volume, are, if there were no other attraction, inva- 
luable. 

The universally desired information respecting* the family 
of Burns, is in this work furnished, up to the year 1827. — 
(Page 295.) Many will, doubtless, wish it had been more 
ample. 

Amidst the cravings of a depraved literary appetite for 
exaggerated situation, extraordinary incident, and exciting 
climaxes, which constitute the features of the greater part of 
the works of imagination of the day, it is pleasing to be 
enabled to record, that this volume, presenting a very differ- 
ent bill of fare, has had such an extensive circulation in 
Great Britain, as to determine the publishers on bringing it 
before the American public, to whom, it is confidently be- 
jfieved, their selection will prove acceptable. 



PREFATORY NOTICE. 



Some apology must be deemed necessary for 
any new attempt to write the Life of Burns. 
The present adventurer on that field has only 
this to offer — that Dr. Currie's Memoir cannot 
be, with propriety, detached from the collection 
of the Poet's works, which it was expressly de- 
signed to accompany ; and the regretted projec- 
tor of Constable's Miscellany sought in vain for 
any other narrative sufficiently detailed to meet 
tlie purposes of this publication. 

The last reprint of Dr. Currie's Edition had 
the advantage of being supperintended by Mr. 
Gilbert Burns ; and that excellent man, availing 
himself of the labors of Cromek, Walker, and 
Peterkin, and supplying many blanks from the 
stores of his own recollection, produced at last a 
book, in which almost every thing that should 
be (and some things that never should have 
been) told, of his brother's history, may be 
found. There is however, at least for indolent 
readers, no small inconvenience in the arrange- 
ment which Currie's Memoir, thus enlarged, pre- 
sents. The frequent references to notes, appen- 
dices, and Letters not included in the same vo- 



XXll PREFATORY NOTICE. 

lume, are somewhat perplexing. And it may, 
moreover, be seriously questioned, whether Gil- 
bert Burns' best method of answering many of 
his amiable author's unconscious mis-statements 
and exaggerations, would not have been to ex- 
punge them altogether from a work with which 
posterity were to connect, in any shape or mea- 
sure, the authority of his own name. 

As to criticism on Burns' poetry, no one can 
suppose that any thing of consequence remains 
to be added on a subject which has engaged suc- 
cessively the pens of Mackenzie, Heron, Cur- 
rie, Scott, Jeffrey, Walker, Wordsworth, Camp- 
bell, and Wilson. 

The humble purpose of the following Essay 
was, therefore, no more than to compress, with- 
in the limits of a single small volume, the sub- 
tance of materials already open to all the world, 
and sufficient, in every point of view, for those 
who have leisure to collect, and candor to weigh 
them. 

For any little touches of novelty that may be 
discovered in a Narrative, thus un ambitiously 
undertaken, the writer is indebted to respecta- 
ble authorities, which shall be cited as he pro- 
ceeds. As to the earlier part of Burns' histo- 
ry, Currie and Walker appear to have left little 
unexplored ; it is chiefly concerning the inci- 
dents of his closing years that their accounts 
have been supposed to admit of a supplement. 



LIFE 



ROBERT BURNS- 



CHAPTER I. 

" My father wns a farmer upon tlic Carrick Border, 
And soberly he brought me up in decency and order." 

Robert Burns was born on the 25th of Janua- 
ary 1759, in a clay-built cottage, about two miles 
to the south of the town of Ayr, and in the imme- 
diate vicinity of the Kirk of Alloway, and the 
"Auld Brig o' Doon." About a week after- 
wards, part of the frail dwelling, which his father 
had constructed with his own hands, gave way at 
midnight ; and the infant poet and his mother 
were carried through the storm, to the shelter of a 
neighboring hovel. 

The father, William Burnes or Burness, (for 
so he spelt his name,) was the son of a farmer in 
Kincardineshire, whence he removed at 19 years 
of age, in consequence of domestic embarrass- 
ments. The farm on which the family lived, formed 
part of the estate forfeited, in consequence of the 
Rebellion of 1715, by the noble house of Keith 
Marischall ; and the poet took pleasure in saying, 
2 



-*" LIFE OF 

that his humble ancestors shared the principles 
and the fall of their chiefs. Indeed, after William 
Kurnes settled in the west of Scotland, there pre- 
vailed a vague notion that he himself had been out 
in the insurrection of 1745-6 ; but though Robert 
would fain have interpreted his father's silence in 
favor of a tale which flattered his imagination, his 
brother Gilbert always treated it as a mere fiction, 
and such it was.* It is easy to suppose that when 
any obscure northern stranger fixed himself in 
those days in the Low Country, such rumors 
were likely enough to be circulated concerning 
him. 

William Burnes labored for some years in the 
neighborhood of Edinburgh as a gardener, and 
then found his way into Ayrshire. At the time 
when Robert was born, he was gardener and 
overseer to a gentleman of small estate, Mr. Fer- 
guson of Doonholm ; but resided on a few acres 
of land, which he had on lease from another pro- 
prietor, and where he had originally intended to 
establish himself as a nurseryman. He married 
Agnes Brown in December 1757, and the poet 
was their first-born. 

William Burnes seems to have been, in his hum- 
ble station, a man eminently entitled to respect. 
He had received the ordinary learning of a Scot- 
tish parish school, and profited largely both by that 
and by his own experience in the world. " I have 
met with few" (said the poet, f after he had him- 
self seen a good deal of mankind) " who under- 

* Gilbert found among- his father's papers a eertificate 
of the minister of his native parish, testifying" that " the 
bearer, William Burnes, had no hand in the late wicked re- 
bellion." 

t Letter of Burns to Dr. Moore, 22d August, 1787. 



BOBERT BURNS. '** 

Stood men, their manners and their ways, equal 
to my father." He was a strictly religious man. 
There exists in his handwriting a little manual ot 
theology, in the form of a dialogue, which he drew 
up for the use of his children, and from which it 
appears that he had adopted more of the Armini- 
an than of the Calvinistic doctrine ; a circumstance 
not to be wondered at, when we consider that he 
had been educated in a district which was never 
numbered among the strong-holds of the Presby- 
terian church. The affectionate reverence with 
which his children ever regarded him, is attested 
by all who have described him as he appeared in 
his domestic circle ; but there needs no evidence 
beside that of the poet himself, who has painted, 
in colors that will never fade, " the saint, the fa- 
ther, and the husband," of the Cottar^s Saturday 
Night. 

Agnes Brown, the wife of this good man, is 
described, as " a very sagacious woman, without 
any appearance of forwardness, or awkwardness 
of manner ;"* and it seems that, in features, and,as 
he grew up, in general address, the poet resembled 
her more than his father, f She had an inexhaus- 
tible store of ballads and traditionary tales, and ap- 
pears to have nourished his infant imagination by 
this means, while her husband paid more atten- 
tion to " the weightier matters of the law." 

These worthy people labored hard for the sup- 
port of an increasing family. William was oc- 
cupied with Mr. Ferguson's service, and Agnes — 
like the wyfe of Auchtermuchtie, who ruled 

" Raith calvis and kye, 
And a' the house baith in and out," 

* Letter of Mr. Mackenzie, surgeon at Ervine. Morrison, 
vol. ii. p. 261. t Ibid. 



99 

^ LIFE OF 

contrived to manage a small dairy as well as her 
children. But though their honesty and diligence 
merited better things, their condition continued to 
be very uncomfortable ; and our poet (in his let- 
ter to Dr. Moore) accounts distinctly for his being 
born and bred " a very poor man's son," by the 
remark, that " stubborn, ungainly integrity, and 
headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disquali- 
fying circumstances." 

These defects of temper did not, however, ob- 
scure the sterling worth of William Burnes in the 
eyes of Mr. Ferguson ; who, when his gardener 
expressed a wish to try his fortune on a farm of 
his then vacant, and confessed at the same time his 
inability to meet the charges of stocking it, at once 
advanced 100/. towards the rem.oval of the diffi- 
culty. Burnes accordingly removed to this farm 
(that of Mount Oliphant, in the parish of Ayr) at 
Whitsuntide 1766, when his eldest son was be- 
tween six and seven years of age. But the soil 
proved to be of the most ungrateful description ; 
and Mr. Ferguson dying, and his affairs falling in- 
to the hands of a harsh factor, (who afterwards 
sat for his picture in the Twa Dogs,) Burnes was 
glad to give up his bargain at the end of six years. 
He then removed about ten miles to a larger and 
better farm, that of Lochlea, in the parish of Tar- 
bolton. But here, after a short interval of pros- 
perity, some unfortunate misunderstanding took 
place as to the conditions of ihe lease ; the dis- 
pute was referred to arbitration ; and after three 
years of suspense, the result involved Burnes in 
ruin. The worthy man lived to know of this 
decision ; but death saved him from witnessing its 
necessary consequences. He died of consumption 
on the 13th Februarv, 1784. Severe labor, and 



23 

ROBERT BURNS. 

hopes only renewed to be baffled, had at last ex- 
hausted a robust but irritable structure and tem- 
perament of body and of mind. 

In the midst of the harassing struggles which 
found this termination, William Burnes appears to 
have used his utmost exertions for promoting the 
mental improvement of his children — a duty rare- 
ly neglected by Scottish parents, however humble 
their station, and scanty their means may be. Ro- 
bert was sent, in his sixth year, to a small school 
at AUoway Miln, about a mile from the house in 
which he was born ; but Campbell, the teacher, 
being in the course of a few months removed to 
another situation, Burnes and four or five of his 
neighbors engaged Mr. John Murdoch to supply 
his place, lodging him by turns in their own houses 
and insuring to him a small payment of money 
quarterly. Robert Burns, and Gilbert his next 
brother, were the aptest and the favorite pupils of 
this worthy man, who survived till very lately, and 
who has, in a letter published at length by Currie, 
detailed, with honest pride, the part which he had 
in the early education of our poet. He became 
the frequent inmate and confidential friend of the 
family, and speaks with enthusiasm of the virtues 
of William Burnes, and of the peaceful and hap. 
py life of his humble abode. 

" He was (says Murdoch) a tender and affec- 
tionate father ; he took pleasure in leading his 
children in the path of virtue ; not in driving them 
as some parents do, to the performance of duties 
to which they themselves are averse. He took 
care to find fault but very seldom ; and therefore, 
when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a 
kind of reverential awe. A look of disapproba- 
tion was felt ; a reproof was severely so ; and a 
2* 



'OO- 
LITE OF 

Stripe with tho tawz, even on the skirt of the coat, 
gave heart-felt ppJn, produced a loud lamentation, 
and brought forth a flood of tears. 

" He had the art of gaining the esteem and 
good-will of those that were laborers under him. 
I think I never saw him angry but twice ; the one 
time it was with the foreman of the band, for not 
reaping the field as he was desired ; and the other 
time, it was with an old man, for using smutty 
inuendos and double eritendres," 

" In this mean cottage, of which T myself was 
at times an inhabitant, I really believe there dwelt 
a larger portion of content than in any place in 
Europe. The Cottar^s Saturday Night will give 
some idea of the temper and manners that pre- 
vailed there." 

The boys, under the joint tuition of Murdoch 
and their father, made rapid progress in reading, 
spelling, and writing ; they committed psalms and 
hymns to memory with extraordinary ease — the 
teacher taking care (as he tells us) thattheyshould 
understand the exact meaning of each word in the 
sentence ere they tried to get it by heart. " As 
soon," * says he, " as they were capable of it, I 
taught them to turn verse into its natural prose or- 
der : sometimes to substitute synonymous expres- 
sions for poetical words ; and to supply all the 
eUipses. Robert and Gilbert were generally at the 
upper end of the class, even when ranged with 
boys by far their seniors. The books most com- 
monly used in the school were the Spelli?ig BooJc, 
the New Testament, the BihUj MasorCs Collection 
of Prose and Verse, and Fisher''s English Gram- 
mar,^' — "Gilbert always appeared to me to 

tCvirrie'sLifc, p. 88. 



on 

ROBERT BURNS. 

possess a more lively imagination, and to be more 
of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach them 
a little church-music. Here they were left far be- 
hind by all the rest of the school. Robert's ear, 
in particular, was remarkably dull, and his voice 
untunable. It was long before I could get them 
to distinguish one tune from another. Robert's 
countenance was generally grave and expressive 
of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. 
Gilbert's face said, Mirth, with thee 1 mean to live ; 
and, certainly, if any person who knew the two 
boys, had been asked which of them was the most 
likely to court the Muses, he would never have 
guessed that Robert had a propensity of that kind." 
" At those years," says the poet himself, in 
1787, *' I v/as by no means a favorite with any 
body. I was a good deal noted for a retentive 
memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my dis- 
position, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say 
idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though 
it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made 
an excellent English scholar ; and by the time 
I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a cri- 
tic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my 
infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an 
old woman who resided in the family, remarkable 
for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She 
had, I suppose, the largest collection in the coun- 
try of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, 
fairies brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kel- 
pies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, 
cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and 
other trumpery. * This cultivated the latent seeds 

* Mr, Kohnrt Clianibcrs tolls mc that this woman's name 
was Jenny Wilson, and that she outlived Burns, with whom 
she was a .great favorite. 



LIFE OF 

of poetry ; but had so strong an effect on my im- 
agination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal ram- 
f^jes, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspi- 
cious places; and though nobody can be more 
sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often 
takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these 
idle terrors. The earliest composition that I re- 
collect taking pleasure in was The Vision of 
Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, How 
are thy servants blest, O Lord! I particularly re- 
member one half-stanza, which was music to my 
boyish ear — 

" For though on dreadful whirls we hung- 
Hig-h on the broken wave — " 

I met with these pieces in Masoji^s English Col- 
lection, one of my school-book. The first two 
books I ever read in private, and which gave me 
more pleasure than any two books I ever read 
since, were. The Life of Hannibal, and The His- 
tory of Sir William Wallace. * Hannibal gave 
my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut 
in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum 
and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a 
soldier ; while the story of Wallace poured a tide 
of Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will 
boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in 
eternal rest." f 

And speaking of the same period and books 
to Mrs. Dunlop, he says, " for several of my 
earlier years I had few other authors ; and many 
a solitary hour have I stole out, after the labori- 

* The Hannibal was lent by Mr. Murdoch ; the Wallace 
by a neig-hboring- blacksmith, 
t Letter to Dr. Moore, 1787. 



ROBERT BURNS. 2* 

0U3 vocations of the clay, to shed a tear over 
their glorious but unfortunate stories. In those 
boyish days I remember in particular being struck 
with that part of Wallace's story where these 
lines occur — 

" Syiie to the Legien wood, when it was late, 
To make a silent and a safe retreat." 

" I chose a fine summer day, the only day my 
line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen 
miles to pay my respects to the Legien wood, 
with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim 
did to Lorelto ; and explored every den and dell 
where I could suppose my heroic countrymen to 
have lodged." 

Murdoch continued his instructions until the 
family had been about two years at Mount Oli- 
phant — when he left for a time that part of the 
country. " There being no school near us," says 
Gilbert Burns, " and our little services being al- 
ready useful on the farm, my father underook to 
teach us arithmetic in the winter evenings by can- 
dle-light — and in this way my two elder sisters 
received all the education they ever received." 

Gilbert tells an anecdote which must not be 
omitted here, since it furnishes an early instance 
of the liveliness of his brother's imagination. Mur- 
doch, being on a visit to the family, read aloud 
one evening part of the tragedy of Titus Androni- 
cus — the circle listened with the deepest interest 
until he came to Act 2, sc. 5, where Lavinia is in- 
troduced " v/ith her hands cut off, and her tongue 
cut out." At this the children entreated, with 
one voice, in an agony of distress, that their friend 
would read no more. " If ye will not hear the 
play out," said William Burnes, " it need not be 



"^ LIFE OP 

left vvith you."—*' If it be left," cries Robert, 
"I will burn it." His father was about to chide 
him for this return to Murdoch's kindness— but the 
good young man interfered, saying he liked to 
see so much sensibility, and left The School for 
Love in place of his translucent tragedy. At this 
time Robert was nine years of age. 

" Nothing," continues Gilbert Burns, " could 
be more retired than our general manner of living 
at Mount Oliphant ; we rarely saw any body but 
the members of our own family. There were no 
boys of our own age, or near it, in the neighbor, 
hood. Indeed the greatest part of the land in the 
vicinity was at that time possessed by shopkeepers, 
and people of that stamp, who had retired from 
business, or who kept their farm in the country, 
at the same time that they followed business in 
town. My father was for some time almost the 
only companion we had. He conversed familiar- 
ly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men ; 
and was at great pains, while we accompanied 
him in the labors of the farm, to lead the conver- 
sation to such subjects as might tend to increase 
our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. 
He borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar 
for us, and endeavored to make us acquainted 
with the situation and history of the different 
countries in the world , while, from a book-soci- 
ety in Ayr, he procured for us the reading of Z)er- 
ham's Physico and Astro -TJieolog?/, and Ray^s 
Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some 
idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert 
read all these books with an avidity and industry 
scarcely to be equaled. My father had been a 
subscriber to Staclchouse's History of the Bible, 
From this Robert collected a competent know- 



ROBERT BURNS. ^^ 

ledge of ancient history ; for no book was so volu- 
minous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated 
as to damp his researches.^^ A collection of letters 
by eminent English authors, is mentioned as hav- 
ing fallen into Burns' hands much about the same 
time, and greatly delighted him. 

When Burns was about thirteen or fourteen 
years old, his father sent him and Gilbert " week 
about, during a summer quarter," to the parish 
school of Dalrymple, two or three miles distant 
from Mount Oliphant, for the improvement of 
their penmanship. The good man could not pay 
two fees ; or his two boys could not be spared at 
the same time from the labor of the farm ! 

'' We lived very poorly," says the poet. " I 
was a dexterous ploughman for my age ; and the 
next eldest to me was a brother, (Gilbert,) who 
could drive the plough very well, and help me to 
thrash the corn. A novel writer might perhaps 
have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, 
but so did not I. My indignation yet boils at the 
recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent let- 
ters, which used to set us all in tears." 

Gilbert Burns gives his brother's situation at 
this period in greater detail — " To the buffetings 
of misfortune," says he, " we could only oppose 
hard labor and the most rigid economy. We 
lived very sparingly. For several years butcher's 
meat was a stranger in the house, while all the 
members of the family exerted themselves to the 
utmost of their strength and rather beyond it, in 
the labors of the farm. My brother, at the age 
of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, 
and at fifteen was the principal laborer on the 
farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female. 
The anguish of mind we felt at our tender years, 



^^ LIFE OF 

under these straits and difficulties, was very great. 
To think of our father growing old, (for he was 
now above fifty,) broken down with the long con- 
tinued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five 
other children, and in a declining state of circum- 
stances, these reflections produced in my brother's 
mind and mine sensations of the deepest distress. 
I doubt not but the hard labor and sorrow of 
this period of his life, was in a great measure the 
cause of that depression of spirits with which 
Robert was so often afflicted through his whole 
life afterwards. At this time he was almost con- 
stantly afflicted in the evenings -with a dull head- 
ache, which at a future period of his life, was ex- 
changed for a palpitation of the heart, and a 
threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed, 
in the night-time." 

The year after this. Burns was able to gain 
three weeks of respite, one before, and two after 
theharvest, from the labors which were thus strain- 
ing his youthful strength. His tutor Murdoch 
was now established in the town of Ayr, and 
the boy spent one of these weeks in revising the 
English grammar vvith him ; the other two were 
given to French. He labored enthusiastically in 
the new pursuit, and came home at the end of a 
fortnight with a dictionary and a Telemaqu% of 
which he made such use at his leisure hours, by 
himself, that in a short time (if we may believe 
Gilbert) he was able to understand any ordinary 
bookof French prose. His progress, whatever it 
really amounted to, was looked on as something 
of a prodigy ; and a writing-master in Ayr, a friend 
of Murdoch, insisted that Robert Burns must next 
attempt tlie rudiments of tlie Latin tongue. He 
did so, but with little perseverance, we may be 



ROBERT BUR^S. ^^ 

sure, yiiice the results were of no sort of viiluc. 
Burns' Latin consisted of a few scraps of hack- 
neyed quotations, such as many that never looked 
into Ruddiman's Rudiments can apply, on occa- 
sion, quite as skillfully as he ever appears to have 
done. The matter is one of no importance ; we 
might perhaps safely dismiss it with parodying 
what Ben Jonson said of Shakspeare ; he had 
little French, and no Latin ; and yet it is proper to 
mention, that he is found, years after he left Ayr- 
shire, writing to Edinburgh in some anxiety about 
a copy of Moliere. 

He had read, however, and read well, ere his 
sixteenth year elapsed, no contemptible amount of 
the literature of his own country. In addition to 
the books which have already been mentioned, he 
tells us that, ere the family quitted Mount Oli- 
phant, he had read " the Spectator, some plays of 
Shakspeare, Pope, (the Homer included,) Tull 
and Dickson on Agriculture, Locke on the Human 
Understanding, Justice's British Gardener^s Di- 
rectory, Boyl's Lectures, Taylor's Scripture Doc. 
trine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of Eng. 
lisli Songs, Harvey's Meditations," (a book which 
has ever been very popular among the Scottish 
peasantry,) " and the works of Allan Ramsay ;" 
and Gilbert adds to this list Pamela, (the first no- 
vel eitherof the brothers read,) two stray volumes 
of Peregrine PicHe, two of Count Fathom, and a 
single volume of "some English historian," con- 
taining the reigns of James L, and his son. The 
*' Collection of Songs," says Burns,* "was my vade 
mecum, I pored over them, driving my cart, or 
walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse ; 

* Letter to Dr. Moorc, 1787. 
3 



^^ LIFE OF 

carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime, 
irom affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced 
I owe to this practice much of my critic -craft, such 
as it is." 

He derived, during this period, considerable 
advantage from the vicinity of Mount Oliphant to 
the town of Ayr — a place then, and still, distin- 
guished by the residence of many respectable gen- 
tlemen's families, and a consequent elegance of 
society and manners, not common in remote pro- 
vincial situations. To his friend, Mr. Murdoch, 
he no doubt owed, in the first instance, whatever 
attentions he received there from the people older 
as well as higher than himself: some such persons 
appear to have taken a pleasure in lending him 
books, and surely no kindness could have been 
more useful to him than this. As for his coevals, 
he himself says, very justly, " It is not commonly 
at that green age that our young gentry have a 
just sense of the distance between them and their 
ragged playfellows. My young superiors," he 
proceeds, " never insulted the clouterly appearance 
of my plough-boy carcass, the two extremes of 
which w ere often exposed to all the inclemencies 
of all the seasons. They would give me stray 
volumes of books : among them, even then, I 
could pick up some observation ; and one, whose 
heart I am sure not even the Munny * Begum 
scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. 
Parting with these, my young friends and bene- 
factors, as they occasionally went off for the East 
or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction, 
— but I was soon called to more serious evils." — 

* The allusion here is to one of the sons of Dr. John Mal- 
colm, afterwards hig-hly distinguished in the service of the 
East India Company. 



33 

ROBERT BURNS. 

(Letter to Moore.) The condition of the ^^"^^|> 
during the last two years of their residei^ce ci^^ 
Mount Ohphant, when the struggle which en ^^_^ 
m their removal was rapidly approaching it ^ ^^ J 
sis, has been already described ; nor need W 
dwell again on the untimely burden of sorrow, as 
well as toil, which fell to the share of the youth- 
ful poet, and which would have broken altogether 
any mind wherein feelings like his had existed, 
without strength like his to control them. 

The removal of the family to Lochlea, in the 
parish of Tarbolton, took place when Burns was 
in his sixteenth year. He had some time before 
this made his first attempt in verse, and the oc- 
casion is thus described by himself in his letter 
to Moore. 

" This kind of life — the cheerless gloom of a 
hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, 
brought me to my sixteenth year ; a little before 
which period I first committed the sin of Rhyme. 
You know our country custom of coupling a man 
and woman together as partners in the labors of 
harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was 
a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. 
My scarcity of English denies me the power of 
doing her justice in that language ; but you know 
the Scottish idiom — she was a bonie, sweet, son- 
sie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to 
herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, 
which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse 
prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be 
the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here 
below ! How she cauglit the contagion, I cannot 
tell : you medical people talk much of infection 
from breathing the same air, the touch, &c. ; but 
I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did 



34 

LIFE OF 

»ot know myself why I liked so much to loiter be- 
iincl \y]tj^ her, when returning in the evening from 
oui labors ; why the tones of her voice made my 
loart. strings thrill like an jEolian harp ; and par- 
^^ ularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, 
when I looked and fingered over her little hand to 
pickoutthe cruel nettle-stings andthistles. Among 
her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweet- 
ly ; and it was her favorite reel, to which I at- 
tempted giving an embodied vehicle in Rhyme. I 
was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could 
make verses like printed ones, composed by men 
who had Greek and Latin ; but my girl sung a 
song, which was said to be composed by a small 
country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, 
with whom he was in love ; and I saw no reason 
why I might not rhyme as well as he : for ex- 
cepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, 
his father living in the moorlands, he had no more 
scholar-craft than myself. 

" Thus with mebegan love and poetry; which at 
times have been my only, and till within the last 
twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment." 

The earliest of the poet's productions is the lit- 
tle ballad, 

" O once I loved a bonnie lass, 

Ay, and I love her still, 
And whilst that honor warms my breast, 

I'll love my handsome Nell," &c. 

Burns himself characterizes it as " a very pue- 
rile and silly performance ;" yet it contains here 
and there lines of which he need hardly have 
been ashamed at any period of his life : 

"She dresses aye sae clean and neat, 

Baith decent and g-enteeJ, 
And then there's something in her gait 

Gars ony dress look irec/." 



ROBERT BURNS. 



35 



" Silly and puerile as it is," said the poet, long 
afterwards, " I am always pleased with this song, 
as it recalls to my mind those happy days when 
my heart was yet honest, and my tongue sincere. . . 
I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and 
to this hour I never recollect it but my heart 
melts, my blood sallies, at the remembrance." 
(MS. Memorandum book, August 1783.) 

In his first epistle to Lapraik (1785) he says — 

" Amaist as soon as I could spell, 
I to the crambo-jing-le fell, 

Tho' rude and roug-h; 
Yet crooning to a body's sell 
Does weel eneugh.'' 

And in some nobler veres, entitled " On my 
Early days," we have the following passage : 

" I mind it weel in early date, 

When I was beardless, young-, and blate 

And first could thrash the barn, 
Or baud a yokin' o' the pleugh, 
_4ri' thd' forfoughten sair eneugk, 

Yet unco proud to learn — 
When first amang the yellow corn 

A man I reckoned was^ 
An' wi' the lave ilk vierry morn 

Coxdd rank my rig and lass — 
Still shearing- and clearing- 

The tither stookit raw, 
Wi' claivers and haivers 

Wearing- the day awa — 
E'en then a wish, I mind its power 
A wish that to my latest hour 

Shall strong-Iy heave my breast : 
That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing- a sang-, at least ; 
The rough bur-thistle spreading wide 

Amang the bearded bear, 
I turn' d the loeeder-clips aside, 

And spared the syvibol dear." 

3* 



36 



LIFE OF 



He is hardly to be envied who can contemplate 
without emotion, this exquisite picture of young 
nature and young genius. It was amidst such 
scenes, that this extraordinary being felt those 
first indefinite stirrings of immortal ambition, 
which he has himself shadowed out under the 
magnificent image of the blind gropings of Ho- 
mer's Cyclops, around the walls of his cave." * 

* Letter to Dr. Moore. 



37 

ROBERT BURAS. 



CHAPTER II. 



' O enviable early da}'-^, 
When dancing" thoug-htless pleasure's maze, 

To care and g-uilt unknown ! 
How ill exchanged for riper times, 
To feel the follies or the crimes 

Of others— or my own !" 



As has been alreadymentioned, WilliamBurnes 
now quitted Mount Oliphant for Lochlea, in the 
parish of Tarbolton, where, for some Httle space, 
fortune appeared to smile on his industry and 
frugahty. Robert and Gilbert were employed by 
their father as regular laborers — he allowing 
them 7/. of wages each per annum; from which 
sum, however, the value of any home-made 
clothes received by the youths was exactly de- 
ducted. Robert Burns' person, inured to daily 
toil, and continually exposed to every variety of 
weather, presented, before the usual time, every 
characteristic of robust and vigorous manhood. 
He says himself, that he never feared a compe- 
titor in any species of rural exertion ; and Gilbert 
Burns, a man of uncommon bodily strength, adds, 
that neither he, nor any laborer he ever saw at 
work, was equal to the youthful poet, cither in 
the corn-field, or tlie severer tasks of the thrash- 
ing-floor. Gilbert says, that Robert's literary zeal 
slackened considerably after their removal to 



LIFE OF 

Aarbolton. He was separated from his acquaint- 
ances of the town of Ayr, and probably missed 
T^ i^^^y ^^® stimulus of their conversation, but 
the kindness that had furnished him with his sup- 
Pv' , such as it was, of books. But the main 
source of his change of habits about this period, 
was, it is confessed on all hands, the precocious 
fervor of one of his own turbulent passions. 

"In my seventeenth year," saysBurns, "to give 
my manners a brush, I went to a country dancing- 
school. My father had an unaccountable antipa- 
thy against these meetings ; and my going was, 
what to this moment I repent, in opposition to his 
wishes. My father was subject to strong pas- 
sions ; from that instance of disobedience in me, 
he took a sort of dislike to me, which I beheve 
was one cause of the dissipation which marked 
my succeeding years.* I say dissipation, compa- 
ratively with the strictness, and sobriety, and re- 
gularity of Presbyterian country life ; for though 
the Will-o'-Wisp meteors of thoughtless whim 
were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early 



* "I wonder," says Gilbert, "how Robert could attribute 
to our father that lasting- resentment of his going- to a danc- 
ing--school against his will, of which he was incapable. I be- 
lieve the truth was, that about this time he began to see the 
dangerous impetuosity of my brother's passions, as well as 
his not being amenable to counsel, which often irritated my 
father, and which he would naturally think a dancing-school 
was not likely to correct. But he was proud of Robert's 
genius, which he bestowed more expense on cultivating than 
on the rest of the family— and he was equally delighted with 
his warmth of heart, and conversational powers. He had 
indeed that dislike of dancing-schools which Robert men- 
tions; but so far O'vercame it during Robert's first month of 
attendance, that he permitted the rest of the family that 
were fit for it, to accompany him during the second month. 
Robert excelled in dancijig, and was for some time distract- 
edly foncfiof it." 



ROBERT BURNS. ^^ 

ingrained piety and virtue kept me for sever^ 
years afterwards within the line of innocence. 
The great misfortune of my life was to want an 
aim. I saw my father's situation entailed on me 
perpetual labor. The only two openings by which 
I could enter the temple of Fortune, were the gate 
of niggardly economy, or the path of little chican- 
ing bargain-making. The first is so contracted an 
aperture, I could never squeeze myself into it; — 
the last I always hated — there was contamination 
in the very entrance ! Thus abandoned of aim or 
view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, 
as well from native hilarity, as from a pride of ob- 
servation and remark; a constitutional melancholy 
or hypochondriacism that made me fly solitude ; 
add to these incentives to social life, my reputa- 
tion for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical 
talent, and a strength of thought, something like 
the rudiments of good sense ; and it will not seem 
surprising that I was generally a welcome guest 
where I visited, or any great wonder that, always 
where two or three met together, there was I 
among them. But far beyond all other impulses of 
my heart, was im penchant pour Vadorahle moiti6 
du genre liumain. My heart was completely tinder, 
and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or 
other ; and as in every other warfare in this world 
my fortune was various, sometimes I was received 
with favor, and sometimes I was mortified with 
a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook, 
I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute 
want at defiance ; and as I never cared farther for 
my labors than while I was in actual exercise, I 
spent the evenings in the way after my own heart. 
A country lad seldom carries on a love adventure 



40 

^^ LIFE OF 

without an assisting confidant. I possessed a cu- 
riosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recom- 
mended me as a proper second on these occa- 
sions, and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in 
being in the secret of half the lovers of the parish 
of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman in knowing 
the intrigues of half the courts of Europe." 

In regard to the same critical period of Burns' 
life, his excellent brother writes as follows : " The 
seven years we lived in Tarbolton parish (extend- 
ing from the seventeenth to the twenty -fourth of 
my brother's age) were not marked by much li- 
terary improvement ; but, during this time, the 
foundation was laid of certain habits in my bro- 
ther's character, which afterwards became but too 
prominent, and which malice and envy have taken 
delight to enlarge on. Though, when young, he 
was bashful and awkward in his intercourse with 
women, yet when he approached manhood, his 
attachment to their society became very strong, 
and he was constantly the victim of some fair en- 
slaver. The symptoms of his passion were often 
such as nearly to equal those of the celebrated 
Sappho. I never indeed knew that he fainted, 
sunk, and died away ; but the agitations of his 
mind and body exceeded any thing of the kind I 
ever knew in real life. He had always a particu- 
lar jealousy of people who were richer than him- 
self, or who had more consequence in life. His 
love, therefore, rarely settled on persons of this 
description. When he selected any one out of 
the sovereignty of his good pleasure to whom he 
should pay his particular attention, she was in- 
stantly invested with a sufficient stock of charms 
out of the plentiful stores of his own imagination ; 



ROBERT BURNS. 



41 



and there was often a great dissimilitude between 
his fair captivator, as she appeared to others, and 
as she seemed when invested with the attributes 
he gave her. One generally reigned paramount 
in his affections ; but as Yorick's affections flowed 
out toward Madame de L — at the remise door 
while the eternal vows of Eliza were upon him, 
so Robert was frequently encountering other at- 
tractions, which formed so many under-plots in 
the drama of his love." 

Thus occupied with labor, love, and dancing, 
the youth " without an aim," found leisure occa- 
sionally to clothe the sufficiently various moods 
of his mind in rhymes. It was as early as se- 
venteen, (he tells us,"^) that he wrote some stan- 
zas which begin beautifully : 



'I dream'd I lay where flowers were springing- 

Gaily in the sunnj'- beana ; 
Listening" to the wild birds sinsfing", 

By a falling- crystal stream. 
Straight the sky grew black and daring, 

Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave, 
Trees with aged arm? were w^arring, 

O'er the swelling drumlie wave. 
Such was life's deceitful morning," &c. 



On comparing these verses with those on 
" Handsome Nell," the advance achieved by the 
young bard in the course of two short years, must 
be regarded with admiration ; nor should a minor 
circumstance be entirely overlooked, that in the 
piece which we have just been quoting, their oc- 
curs but one Scotch word. It was about this time, 
also, that he wrote a ballad of much less ambitious 
vein, which, years after, he says, he used to con 



* Reliques, p. 242. 



42 



LIFE OF 



over with delight, because of the faithfulness 
with which it recalled to him the circumstances 
and feelings of his opening manhood. 



— " My father was a fai-mcr upon the Carrick border, 
And carefully he Vjred me up in decency and order. 
He bade me act a manly part, tho' I had ne'er a farthing" ; 
For without an honest, manly heart, no man was worth re- 
gard ing-. 

Then out into the world my course I did determine ; 

Thu to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great was charm- 

ing : 
My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my education; 
Resolved was I at least to try to mend my situation. 



No help, nor hope, nor view had I, nor person to befriend mc ; 
!So I must toil, and sweat, and broil, and labor to sustain me. 
To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father bred me 

early ; 
For one, he said, to labor bred, was a match for fortune 

fairly. 

Thus all obscure, unknown and poor, thro' life I'm doomed 

to wander ; 
Till down my weary bones I lay, in everlasting slumber. 
No view, nor care, but shun whate'er might breed me pain 

or sorrow ; 
1 live to-day, as well's I may, regardless of to-morrow." &c. 



These are the only two of his very early pro- 
ductions in which we have nothing expressly 
about love. The rest were composed to celebrate 
the charms of those rural beauties who followed 
each other in the dominion of his fancy — or shar- 
ed the capacious throne between them ; and we 
may easily believe, that one who possessed, with 
his other qualifications, such powers of flattering, 
feared competitors as little in the diversions of 
his evenings as in the toils of his day. 



ROBERT 13UKNS. 



43 



The rural lover, in those districts, pursues his 
tender vocation in a style, the especial fascination 
of which town-bred swains may find it somewhat 
difficult to comprehend. After the labors of tliQ 
day are over, nay, very often after he is supposed 
by the inmates of his own fireside to be in his bed, 
the happy youth thinks little of walking many long 
Scotch miles to the residence of his mistress, 
who, upon the signal of a tap at her window, 
comes forth to spend a soft hour or two beneath 
the harvest moon, or, if the weather be severe, 
(a circumstance which never prevents the journey 
from being accomplished,) amidst the sheaves of 
her father's barn. This " chappin' out," as they 
call it, is a custom of which parents commonly 
wink at, if they do not openly approve, the ob- 
servance ; and the consequences are far, very far, 
more frequently quite harmless, than persons not 
familiar with the peculiar manners and feelings 
of our peasantry may find it easy to believe. 
Excursions of this class form the theme of almost 
all the songs which Burns is known to have pro- 
duced about this period, — and such of these ju- 
venile performances as have been preserved, are, 
without exception, beautiful. They show how 
powerfully his boyish fancy had been affected by 
the old rural minstrelsy of his own country, and 
how easily his native taste caught the secret of 
its charm. The truth and simplicity of nature 
breathe in every line — the images are always 
just, often originally happy — and the growing re- 
finement of his ear and judgment, may be traced 
in the terser language and more mellow flow of 
each successive ballad. 

The best of the songs written at this time is 
that beginning, — 

4 



44 LIFE OF 

" It was upon a Lammas night, 

When corn rigs are bonnie, 
Beneath the moon's vinclouded light, 

I held awa to Annie. 
The time flew by wi' lentlcss heed, 

Till, 'tween the late and early, 
Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed 

To see me thro' the barley," &c. 

We may let the poet carry on his own story, 
" A circumstance," says he,* " which made some 
alteration on my mind and manners, was, that I 
spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling 
coast, a good distance from home, at a noted 
school,| to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, 
&c., in which I made a good progress. But I 
made a greater progress in the knowledge of man- 
kind. The contraband trade was at that time 
very successful, and it sometimes happened to me 
to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes 
of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were 
till this time new to me ; but I was no enemy to 
social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, 
and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, 
yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, 
till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is al- 
ways a carnival in my bosom, when a charming 
Jilette, who lived next door to the school, overset 
my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent 
from the sphere of my studies. I, however, strug- 
gled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days 
more ; but stepping into the garden one charming 
noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my 
angel, like 

' Proserpine, gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flower.' 

* Letter to Dr. Moore. 

t This was the school of Kirkoswald's, 



ROBERT BURNS. 



45 



« It was in vain to think of doing any more 
good at school. The remaining week I staid, I 
did nothing hut craze the faculties of my soul ahout 
her, or steal out to meet her ; and the last two 
nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a 
mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent 
girl had kept me guiltless. 

" I returned home very considerably improved. 
My reading v/as enlarged with the very important 
addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's Works ; 
I had seen human nature in a new phasis ; and 1 
engaged several of my school-fellows to keep up a 
literary correspondence with me. This improved 
me in composition. I had met with a collection of 
letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I 
pored over them most devoutly ; I kept copies of 
any of my own letters that pleased me ; and a 
comparison between them and the composition of 
most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. 
I carried this whim so far, that though I had not 
three farthings worth of business in the world, yet 
almost every post brought me as many letters as 
if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book 
and ledger. 

"My life flowed on much in the same course 
till my twenty-third year. Vive Vamour, et vive la 
bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The 
addition of two more authors to my library gave 
me great pleasure ; Sterne and McKenzie — Tris. 
tram Shandy and The Man of Feeling — were my 
bosom favorites. Poesy was still a darling walk 
for my mind ; but it was only indulged in accord- 
ing to the humor of the hour. I had usually half 
a dozen or more pieces on hand ; I took up one 
or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the 



"^^ X.IFE OP 

mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on 
futigue. My passions, once lighted up, raged like 
so many devils, till they found vent in rhyme ; and 
then the conning over my verses, like a spell, 
soothed all into quiet." 

Of the rhymes of those days, few, when he 
wrote his letter to Moore, had appeared in print. 
Winter, a dirge, an admirably versified piece, is of 
their number ; the Death of Poor Mailie, Mailie's 
Elegy, and John Barleycorn ; and one charming 
song, inspired by the Nymph of Kirkosvvald's, 
whose attractions put an end to his trigonometry. 

" Now westlin winds, and slaughtering- guns, 

luring Autumn's pleasant weather ; 
The moorcock springs, on whirring wings, 

Amang the blooming heather. . . . 
— Peggy dear, the evening's clear, 

'I'hick flies the skimming swallow ; 
The sky is blue, thefields in view. 

All fading green and yellow ; 
Come let us stray ovir gladsome way," &c. 

John Barleycorn is a clever old ballad, very 
cleverly new-modeled and extended ; but the 
Death and Elegy of Poor Mailie deserves more 
attention. The expiring animal's admonitions 
touching the education of the " poor toop lamb, 
her son and heir," and the "yowie, silly thing," 
her daughter, are from the same peculiar vein of 
sly homely wit, imbedded upon fancy, which he 
afterwards dusf with a bolder hand in the Twa 
Dogs, and perhaps to its utmost depth, in his 
Death and Dr. Hornhooh. It need scarcely be 
added, that poor Mailie was a real personage, 
though she did not actually die until some time 
after her last words were written. She had been 



TIOBERT BURNS. 



47 



purchased by Burns in a frolic, and became ex- 
ceedingly attached to his person. 

" Thro' all the town she trotted by him ; 
A lang- half-mile she could descry him ; 
Wi' kindly bleat, when slie did spy him, 

She ran wi' speed : 
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er came nig-h him, 

Than Mailie dead." 

These little pieces are in a much broader dialect 
than any of their predecessors. His merriment 
and satire were, from the beginning, Scotch. 

Notwithstanding the luxurious tone of some of 
Burns' pieces produced in those times, we are as- 
sured by himself (and his brother unhesitatingly 
confirms the statement) that no positive vice min- 
gled in any of his loves, until after he had reached 
his twenty-third year. He has already told us, that 
his short residence "away from home," at Kirk- 
oswald's, where he mixed in the society of sea- 
faring men and smugglers, produced an unfavor- 
able alteration on some of his habits ; but in 1781- 
2 he spent six months at Irvine; and it is from 
this period that his brother dates a serious change. 

" As his numerous connexions," says Gilbert, 
*• were governed by the strictest rules of virtue 
and modesty,(from which he never deviated till his 
twenty-third year,) he became anxious to be in a 
situation to marry. This was not likely to be the 
case while he remained a farmer, as the stocking 
of a farm required a sum of money he saw no 
probabiHty of being master of for a great while. 
He and I had for several years taken land of our 
fatlier, for the purpose of raising flax on our own 
account ; and in the course of selling it, Robert 
began to think of turning flax-dresser, both as be- 

4* 



48 



LIFE OF 



ing suitable to his grand view of settling in life* 
and as subservient to the flax-raising."* Burns, 
accordingly, went to a half-brother of his mother's, 
by name Peacock, a flax-dresser in Irvine, with the 
view of learning this new trade, and for some time 
he applied himself diligently ; but misfortune after 
misfortune attended him. The shop accidentally 
caught fi^re during the carousal of a new-year's- 
day's morning, and Robert " was left, like a true 
poet, not worth a sixpence." — " I was obliged," 
says he, " to give up this scheme ; the clouds of 
misfortune were gathering thick round my father's 
head ; and what was worst of all, he was visibly 
far gone in a consumption ; and, to crown my dis- 
tress, a helle fille whom I adored, and who had 
pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matri- 
mony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of 
mortification. f The finishing evil that brought 
up the rear of this infernal file, was, my consti- 

* David Sillar assured Mr. Robert Chambers that this no- 
tion originated witl) W^iiliam Burnes, wiio thoug-ht of becom- 
ing- entirely a lint-farmer ; and, by way of keeping- as much 
of the profits as he could within his family, of making his 
eldest son a flax-dresser. 

t Some letters referring to this affair are omitted in the 
" General Correspondence" of Gilbert^s edition ; for what 
reason I know not. They nre surely as well worth preserv- 
ing as many in the Collection, particularly when their early 
date is considei-ed. The first of them begins thus :— " I ve- 
rily believe, my dear E., that the pure genuine feelings of 
love are as rare in the world as the pure genuine principles 
of virtue and piety. This, I hope, will account for the un- 
common style of all my letters to you. By uncommon, I 
mean their being written in such a serious manner, which, 
to tell you the truth, has made me often afraid lest you 
should take me for some zealous bigot, who conversed with 
his mistress as he would converse with his minister. I don't 
know how it is, my dear ; for though, exc(jpt your compan)'-, 
there is nothing on earth gives me so much pleasure as 
writing to you, yet it never gives me those giddy raptures 



ROBERT BURNS. 49 

tutional melancholy being increased to such a do* 
grec, that for three months I was in a state of mind" 
scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches 
who have got their mittimus — Depart from me ye 
cursexV The following letter, addressed by Burns 
to his father, three days before the unfortunate 
fire took place, will show abundantly that the 
gloom of his spirits had little need of that aggra- 
vation. When we consider by whom, to whom, 
and under what circumstiances, it was written, the 
letter is every way a remarkable one : 



so mucl) talked of among" lovers. I have often thoug-ht, 
that if a well-grounded allection be not really a part of vir- 
tue, 'tis something- extremely akin to it. Whenever the 
thoug-ht of my E, warms my heart, every feeling- of huma- 
nity, every principle of g-enerosity, kindles in my breast. It 
cxting-uishes every dirty spark of malice and envy, which 
are bvit too apt to invest mc. I g-rasp every creature in the 
arms of universal benevolence, and equally participate in 
the pleasures of the happy, and sympathize with the mise- 
ries of the unfortunate. I assure you, my dear, I often look 
up to the divine Disposer of events, with an eye of g-ratitudc 
for the blessing- which I hope he intends to bestow on me, in 
bestowing- you." 

What follows is from Burns' letter, in answer to that in 
which the young- woman intimated her final rejection of his 
vows. — " I oug-ht in g-ood manners to have acknowledg-ed the 
receipt of your letter before this time, but my heart was so 
shocked with the contents of it, that I can scarcely yet collect 
my thoug-hts so as to write to you on the subject. I will not 
attempt to describe what I felt on receiving- your letter. I 
read it over and over, ag-ain and ag-ain ; and thoug-h it was 
in the politest lang-uag-e of refusal, still it was peremptory ; 
' you were sorry you could not make me a return, but you 
wish me,' what, without you, I never can obtain, 'you wish 
me all kind of happiness.' Itwouldbe weak and unmanly 
to say that without you I never can be happy; but sure I ain, 
that sharing- life with you, would haveg-iven it a relish, that, 
wanting- you, J never can taste." In such excellent Eng-lish 
did Burns woo his country maidens in at most his twentieth 
year. 



50 



LIFE OF 



" Honored Sir, 
" I HAVE purposely delayed writing, in the 
hope that I should have the pleasure of seeing 
you on New-year's day ; but work comes so hard 
upon us, that I do not choose to be absent on that 
account, as well as for some other little reasons, 
which I shall tell you at meeting. My. health is 
nearly the same as when you were here, only my 
sleep is a little sounder ; and, on the whole, I am 
rather better than otherwise, though I mend by 
very slow degrees. The weakness of my nerves 
has so debilitated my mind, that I dare neither 
review past wants, nor look forward into futu- 
rity ; for the least anxiety or perturbation in my 
breast produces most unhappy effects on my 
whole frame. Sometimes, indeed, when for an 
hour or two my spirits are alightened, I glimmer 
a little into futurity; but my principal, and indeed 
my only pleasurable employment, is looking back- 
wards and forwards in a moral and religious way. 
I am quite transported at the thought, that ere 
long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal 
adieu to all the pains and uneasiness, and disqui- 
etudes of this weary life ; for I assure you I am 
heartily tired of it ; and, if I do not very much 
deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly 
resign it^ 

' The soul, uneasy, and confined at home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.' 

" It is for this reason I am more pleased with 
the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the 7th chapter 
of Revelation, than with any ten times as many 
verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange 
tlie noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me 
for all that this world has to ofier.* As for this 

* The verses of Scripture here alluded to, [are as follows: 
"15. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and 



ROBERT BURNS. 51 

world, I despair of ever making a figure in it. I 
am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the 
flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable 
of entering into such scenes. Indeed, I am altoge- 
ther unconcerned at the thoughts of this life. I 
foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await 
me, and I am in some measure prepared, and daily 
preparing, to meet them. I have but just time and 
paper to return you my grateful thanks for the 
lessons of virtue and piety you have given me, 
which were too much neglected at the time of 
giving^them, but which I hope have been remem- 
bered ere it is yet too late. Present my dutiful re- 
spects to my mother, and my compliments to Mr, 
and Mrs. Muir; and, with wishing you a merry 
New-year's-day, I shall conclude. 
" I am, honored Sir, your dutiful son, 

" Robert Burns," 

" P. S. — My meal is nearly out ; but I am go- 
ing to borrow, till I get more." 

" This letter," says Dr. Currie, " written seve- 
ral years before the publication of his Poems,when 
his name was as obscure as his condition was 
humble,displaysthe philosophic melancholy which 
so generally forms the poetical temperament, and 
that buoyant and ambitious spirit which indicates 

serve him day and nig-ht in his temple ; and he that sitteth 
on thetlironc shall dwell among- them. 

" 16. They shall hung-er no more, neither thirst any more ; 
neither shall the sun lig-ht on them, nor any heat. 

" 17. For t!)e Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall 
feed them, and shall lead them luito living fountains of wa- 
ters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 



52 



LIFE OF 



a mind conscious of its strength. At Irvine, Burns 
at this time possessed a single room for his lodg- 
ings, rented, perhaps, at tiie rate of a shilHng a 
week. He passed his days in constant labor as a 
flax-dresser, and his food consisted chiefly of oat- 
meal, sent to him from his father's family. The 
store of this humble, though wholesome nutri- 
ment, it appears, was nearly exhausted, and he 
was about to borrow till he should obtain a supply. 
Yet even in this situation, his active imagination 
had formed to itself pictures of eminence and dis- 
tinction. His despair of making a figure in the 
world, shows how ardently he wished for honor- 
able fame ; and his contempt of life, founded on 
this despair, is the genuine expression of a youth- 
ful and generous mind. In such a state of reflec- 
tion, and of suffering, the imagination of Burns 
naturally passed the dark boundaries of our 
earthly horizon, and rested on those beautiful re- 
presentations of a better world, where there is 
neither thirst, nor hunger, nor sorrow, and where 
happiness shall be in proportion to the capacity 
of happiness," — Life, p. 102. 

Unhappily for himself and for the world, it was 
not always in the recollections of his virtuous 
borne and the study of his Bible, that Burns sought 
for consolation amidst the heavy distresses which 
"his youth was heir to." Irvine is a small sea-port : 
and here, as at Kirkoswald's, the adventurous spi- 
rits of a smuggling coast, with all their jovial ha- 
bits, were to be met with in abundance. "He con- 
tracted some acquaintance," says Gilbert, " of a 
freer manner of thinking and living than he had 
been used to, whose society prepared him for 
overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue, which had 
hitherto restrained him." 

I owe to Mr. Robert Chambers, (author of Tra- 



ROBERT BURNS. 



53 



ditions of Edinburgh) the following note of a 
conversation which he had, in June 1826, with a 
respectable old citizen of this town : " Burns was, 
at the time of his residence among us, an older 
looking man than might have been expected from 
his age — very darkly complexioned, with a strong 
dark eye — of a thoughtful appearance, amounting 
to v.'hat might be called a gloomy attentiveness ; 
so much so, that when in company which did not 
call forth his brilliant powers of conversation, he 
might often be seen, for a considerable space toge- 
ther, leaning down on his palm, with his elbow 
resting on his knee. He was in common silent 
and reserved ; but when he found a man to his 
mind, he constantly made a point of attaching 
himself to his company, and endeavoring to bring 
out his powers. It was among women alone that 
he uniformly exerted himself, and uniformly shone. 
People remarked even then, that when Robert 
Burns did speak, he always spoke to the point, 
and in general with a sententious brevity. His 
moody thoughtfulness,jand laconic style of expres- 
sion, were both inherited from his father, who, 
for his station in life, was a very singular person." 
One of the most intimate companions of Burns, 
while he remained at Irvine, seems to have been 
that David Sillar, to whom the Epistle to Davie, 
a Brother Poet, was subsequently addressed. 
Sillar was at this time a poor schoolmaster in Ir- 
vine, enjoying considerable reputation as a writer 
of local verses : and, according to all accounts^ 
extremely jovial in his life and conversation.* 

* If this person had some share in leading- Burns into 
convivial^ dissipations, it is proper to observe, that his own 
conduct in after life made abundant atonement for that, 
and all his other early irreg-ularities. Mr. Sillar bccauio in. 



54 LIFE OF 

Burns himself thus sums up the resulis of his 
residence at Irvine : " From tliis adventure I 
learned something of a town life : but the princi- 
pal thing which give my mind a turn, was a friend- 
ship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble 
character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He 
was the son of a simple mechanic ; but a great 
man in the neighborhood, taking him under his 
patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a 
view of bettering his situation in life. The patron 
dying just as he was ready to lanch out into the 
world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea ; 
where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a 
little before I was acquainted with him, he had 
been set ashore by an American privateer, on the 
wild coast of Connaught, stripped of every thing. 
His mind was fraught with indepen- 
dence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I 
loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, 
and of course strove to imitate him. In some mea- 
sure I succeeded ; I had pride before, but he 
taught it to flow in proper channels. His know- 
ledge of the world was vastly superior to mine ; 
and I was all attention to learn. He was the only 
man I ever saw who was a greater fool than my- 
self, where woman was the presiding star ; but he 
spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor — 
which hitherto I had regarded with honor. Here 



the sequel much more remarkable for strict habits of abste- 
miousness, than his unfortunate friend ever in reality was 
for the reverse ; and worldly prosperity having" attended his 
industry in a very uncommon degree, he survived till lately 
(if he does not still survive) one of the most respectable, as 
well as wealthy, inhabitants of his native town. He pub- 
lished a volume of poems, in some of which considerable 
ingenuity is displayed ; and often filled with much credit 
the situation of a borough magistrate. 



ROBERT BURNS. 55 

his friendship did me a mischief," Professor 
Walker, when preparing to write his Sketch of the 
Poet's life, was informed by an aged inhabitant of 
Irvine, that Burns' chief delight while there was 
in discussing religious topics, particularly in those 
circles which usually gather in a Scotch church, 
yard after service. The senior added, that Burns 
commonly took the high Calvinistic side in such 
debates ; and concluded with a boast, that " the 
lad" was indebted to himself in a great measure 
for the gradual adoption of " more liberal opi- 
nions." It was during the same period, that the 
poet was first initiated in the mysteries of free 
masonry, '* which was," says his brother, " his 
first introduction to the life of a boon companion." 
He was introduced to St. Mary's Lodge of Tar- 
bolton by John Ranken, a very dissipated man of 
considerable talents, to whom he afterwards in- 
dited a poetical epistle, which will be noticed in 
its place. ^ 

" Rhyme," Burns says, " I had given up ;" (on \_^ 
going to Irvine ;) " but meeting with Ferguson's J 
Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly sounding i 
lyre with emulating vigor." Neither flax-dress- ! 
ing nor the tavern could keep him long from his / 
proper vocation. But it was probably this acciden- f 
tal meeting with Ferguson, that in a great measure/ 
finally determined the >Scoi<i5/t character of Burns'\ 
poetry; and indeed, but for the lasting sense of j 
this obligation, and some natural sympathy with ' 
the personal misfortunes of Ferguson's life, it 
would be difficult to account for the very high 
terms in which Burns always mentions his pro- 
ductions. 

Shortly before Burns went to Irvine, he, his 
brother Gilbert, and some seven or eight young 
5 



56 LIFE OF 

men besides, all of the parish of Tarbolton, had 
formed themselves into a society, which they call- 
ed the Bachelors' Club ; and which met one even- 
ing in every month for the purposes of mutual en- 
tertainment and improvement. That their cups 
were but modestly filled is evident ; for the rules 
of the club did not permit any member to spend 
more than threepence at a sitting. A question 
was announced for discussion at the close of each 
meeting ; and at the next they came prepared to 
deliver their sentiments upon the subject-matter 
thus proposed. Burns drew up the regulations, 
and evidently was the principal person. He in- 
troduced his friend Sillar during his stay at Irvine, 
and the meetings appear to have continued as 
long as the family remained in Tarbolton. Of 
the sort of questions discussed, we may form some 
notion from the minute of one evening, still extant 
in Burns' handwriting. — Question for Hallow- 
e'en, (Nov. 11,) 1780. — ^^ Suppose a young man ^ 
bred a farmer j but without any fortune^ has it in 
his power to marry either of two women, the one a 
girl of large fortune, but neither handsome in per- 
son, nor agreeable in conversation, but who can 
manage the household affairs of a farm well 
enough ; the other of them a girl every way agree- 
able in person, conversation, and behavior, but with- 
out any fortune : which of them shall he choose ?" 
Burns, as may be guessed, took the imprudent 
side in this discussion. 

" On one solitary occasion," says he, " we re- 
solved to meet at Tarbolton in July, on the race- 
night, and have a dance in honor of our society. 
Accordingly, we did meet, each one with apartner, 
and spent the evening in such innocence and mer- 
riment, such cheerfulness and good humor, that 



ROBERT BURNS. 57 

every brother will long remember it with delight." 
There can be no doubt that Burns would not have 
patronized this sober association so long, unless he 
had experienced at its assemblies the pleasure of 
a stimulated mind ; and as little, that to the habit 
of arranging his thoughts, and expressing them 
in somewhat of a formal shape, thus early culti- 
vated, we ought to attribute much of that conver- 
sational skill which, when he first mingled with 
the upper world, was generally considered as the 
most remarkable of all his personal accomplish- 
ments. Burns' associates of the Bachelors' Club, 
must have been young men possessed of talents 
and acquirements, otherwise such minds as his 
and Gilbert's could not have persisted in measur- 
ing themselves against theirs ; and we may be- 
lieve that the periodical display of the poet's own 
vigor and resources, at these club-meetings, and 
(more frequently than his brother approved) at 
the Free Mason Lodges of Irvine and Tarbolton, 
extended his rural reputation ; and, by degrees, 
prepared persons not immediately included in his 
own circle, for the extraordinary impression which 
his poetical efforts were ere long to create all 
over " the Carrick border." 

Mr. David Sillar gives an account of the begin- 
ning of his own acquaintance with Burns, and in- 
troduction into this Bachelors' Club, which will 
always be read with much interest : " Mr. Robert 
Burns was some time in the parish of Tarbolton 
prior to my acquaintance with him. His social 
disposition easily procured him acquaintance; but 
a certain satirical seasoning with which he and all 
poetical geniuses are in some degree influenced, 
while it set the rustic circle in a roar, was not un- 
accompanied with its kindred attendant, suspicious 



58 LIFE OF 

fear. I recollect hearing his neighbors observe, 
he had a great deal to say for himself, and that 
they suspected his principles. He wore the only 
tied hair in the parish : and in the church, his 
plaid, which was of a particular color, I think 
fillemot, he wrapped in a particular manner round 
his shoulders. These surmises, and his exterior, 
had such a magnetical influence on my curiosity, 
as made me particularly solicitous of his acquaint- 
ance. Whether my acquaintance with Gilbert 
was casual or premeditated, I am not now certain. 
By him I was introduced, not only to his brother, 
but to the whole of that family, where in a short 
time, I became a frequent, and I believe, not un- 
welcome visitant. After the commencement of 
my acquaintance with the bard, we frequently met 
upon Sundays at church, when, between sermons, 
instead of going with our friends or lasses to the 
inn, we often took a walk in the fields. In these 
walks, I have frequently been struck with bis faci- 
lity in addressing the fair sex ; and many times, 
when I have been bashfully anxious how to ex- 
press myself, he would have entered into conver- 
sation with them with the greatest ease and free- 
dom ; and it was generally a death-blow to our 
conversation, however agreeable, to meet a female 
acquaintance. Some of the few opportunities of 
a noontide walk that a country life allows her la- 
borious sons, he spent on the banks of the river, 
or in the woods, in the neighborhood of Stair, a 
situation peculiarly adapted to the genius of a ru- 
ral bard. Some book (generally one of those 
mentioned in his letter to Mr. Murdoch) he always 
carried and read, when not otherwise employed. 
It was likewise his custom to read at table. In 
one of my visits to Lochlca, in time of a sowen 



ROBERT BURNS. 59 

supper, he was so intent on reading, I think Tris- 
tram Shandy, that his spoon falUng out of his hand, 
made him exclaim, in a tone scarcely imitable, 
'Alas, poor Yorick !' Such was Burns, and such 
were his associates, when, in May, 1781, I was 
admitted a member of the Bachelors' Club." — 
Letter to Mr. Aiken of Ayr^ in Morrison^s Burns, 
vol. ii. pp. 257-260. 

The misfortunes of William Burnes thickened 
apace, as has already been seen, and were ap- 
proaching their crisis at the time when Robert 
came home from his flax-dressing experiment at 
Irvine. The good old man died soon after ; and 
among other evils which he thus escaped, was an 
affliction that would, in his eyes, have been severe. 
The poet had not, as he confesses, come unscath- 
ed out of the society of those persons of " liberal 
opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine ; and 
he expressly attributes to their lessons, the scrape 
into which he fell soon after " he put his hand to 
plough again." He was compelled, according to 
the then all but universal custom of rural parishes 
in Scotland, to do penance in church, before the 
congregation, in consequence of the birth of an 
illegitimate child ; and whatever may be thought 
of the propriety of such exhibitions, there can be 
no difference of opinion as to the culpable levity 
with which he describes the nature of his offence, 
and the still more reprehensible bitterness with 
which, in his Epistle to Ranken,* he inveighs 

* There is much humor in some of the verses ; as, 
" 'Twas ae nig-ht lately, in my fun, 
I g-aed a roving- wi' my g'un, 
An' broug-ht a paitrick to the grun', 

A bonnie hen, 
And, as the twiliirlit was beg-un, 

Thought nanc v»-ad ken," &c. 
5* 



00 LIFE OF 

against the clergyman, who, in rebuking him, only 
performed what was then a regular part of the 
clerical duty, and a part of it that could never 
have been at all agreeable to the worthy man 
whom he satirizes under the appellation of " Dad- 
die Auld." The Poet's Welcome to an Illegitimate 
Child was composed on the same occasion — a 
piece in which some very manly feelings are ex- 
pressed, along with others which it can give no 
one pleasure to contemplate. There is a song in 
honor of the same occasion, or a similar one 
about the same period, The rantitf Dog the Dad- 
die o^t, — which exhibits the poet as glorying, and 
only glorying in his shame. 

When I consider his tender affection for the 
surviving members of his own family, and the re- 
verence with v/hich he ever regarded the memo- 
ry of the father whom he had so recently buried, 

1 cannot believe that Burns has thought fit to re- 
cord in verse all the feelings which this exposure 
excited in his bosom. " To waive (in his own lan- 
guage) the quantum of the sin," he who, two years 
afterwards, wrote the Cottar^ s Saturday Night, had 
not, we may be sure, hardened his heart to the 
thought of bringing additional sorrow and unex- 
pected shame to the fireside of a widowed mother. 
But his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial 
associates guess how little he was able to drown 
the whispers of the still small voice ; and the fer- 
menting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within it- 
self, escaped (as may be too often traced in the 
liistory of satirists) in the shape of angry sarcasms 
against others, who, whatever their private errors 
might be, had at least done him no wrong. 



ROBERT BURNS. 61 

It is impossible not to smile at one item of con- 
solation which Burns proposes to himself on this 
occasion : 

" The mair they talk, I'm kend the better; 
E'en let them clash ! 

This is indeed a singular manifestation of " the 
last infirmity of noble minds." 



02 LIFE or 



CHAPTER III. 

" The star that rules my luckless lot 
Has fated me the russet coat, 
And damn'd my fortune to the g-roat : 

But in requit, 
Has bless'd me \vi' a random shot 
O' country wit." 

Three months before the death of William 
Burnes, Robert and Gilbert took the farmof Moss- 
giel,* in the neighboring parish of Mauchline, 
with the view of providing a shelter for their pa- 
rents in the storm, which they had seen gradually 
thickening, and knew must soon burst ; and to this 
place the whole family removed on William's 
death. " It was stocked by the property and in- 
dividual savings of the whole family, (says Gilbert,) 
and was a joint concern among us. Every mem- 
ber of the family was allowed ordinary wages for 
the labor he performed on the farm. My bro- 
ther's allowance and mine was £7 per annum 
each. And during the whole time this family con- 
cern lasted, which was four years, as well as du- 
ring the preceding period at Lochlea, Robert's 
expenses never, in any one year, exceeded his 
slender income." 

" I entered on this farm," says the poet, f " with 
a full resolution, come, go, I will he wise. I read 
farming books, I calculated crops, I attended mar- 

* The farm consisted of 119 acres, and tlie rent v/as 90/. 
t Letter to Dr. Moore. 



ROBERT BURNS. 63 

kets ; and, in short in spite of the devil, and the 
world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been 
a wise man ; but the first year, from unfortunately 
buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, 
we lost half our crops. This overset all my wis- 
dom, and I returned, like the dog to his vomit, and the 
sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.^^ 
" At the time that our poet took the resolution 
of becoming wise, he procured," says Gilbert, "a 
little book of blank paper, with the purpose, ex- 
pressed on the first page, of making farming me- 
morandums. These farming memorandums are 
curious enough," Gilbert slyly adds, " and a spe- 
cimen may gratify thereader." — specimens accor- 
dingly he gives ; as, 

" O why the deuce should I repine, 

And be an ill foreboder'? 
I'm twenty-three, and five-foot nine, — 

I'll go and be a sodgcr," &c. 

*' O leave novells, ye Mauchline belles, 
Ye' re safer at your spinning- wheel ; 
Such witching books are baited hooka 
For rakish rooks — like Rob Mossgiel. 
Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons, 
They make your youthful fancies reel, 
They heat your veins, and fire your brains, 
And then ye're prey for Rob Mossg-iel," &c. &c. 

The four years during which Burns resided on 
this cold and ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, were 
the most important of his life. It was then that 
his genius developed its highest energies ; on the 
works produced in these years his fame was first 
established, and must ever continue mainly to rest ; 
it was then also that his personal character came 
out in all its brightest lights, and in all but its 
darkest shadows ; and indeed from the commence- 



64 LIFE OF 

ment of this period, the history of the man may 
be traced, step by step, in his own immortal wri- 
tings. 

Burns now began to know that nature had 
meant him for a poet ; and dihgently, though as 
yet in secret, he labored in what he felt to be his 
destined vocation. Gilbert continued for some 
time to be his chief, often indeed his only confi- 
dant ; and any thing more interesting and delight- 
ful than this excellent man's account of the man- 
ner in which the poems included in the first of his 
brother's publications were composed, is certainly 
not to be found in the annals of literary history. 

The reader has already seen, that long before 
the earliest of them was known beyond the domes- 
tic circle, the strength of Burns' understanding, 
and the keenness of his wit, as displayed in his or- 
dinary conversation, and more particularly at ma- 
sonic meetings and debating clubs, (of which he 
formed one in Mauchline, on the Tarbolton model, 
immediately on his removal to Mossgiel,) had 
made his name known to soma considerable extent 
in the country about Tarbolton, Mauchline, and 
Irvine : and this prepared the way for his poetry. 
Professor Walker gives an anecdote on this head, 
which must not be omitted. Burns already num. 
bered several clergymen among his acquaintances: 
indeed, we know from himself, that at this period 
he was not a little flattered, and justly so, no 
question, with being permitted to mingle occasion- 
ally in their society.* One of these gentlemen 
told the Professor, that after entering on the cleri- 
cal profession, he had repeatedly met Burns in 
company, " where," said he, " the acuteness and 

* Letter to Dr. Moore, sub initio. 



ROBERT BURNS. 65 

originality displayed by him, the depth of his dis- 
cernment, the force of his expressions, and the au- 
thoritative energy of his understanding, had 
created a sense of his power, of the extent of which 
I was unconscious, till it was revealed to me by 
accident. On the occasion of my second appear- 
ance in the pulpit,! came with an assured and tran- 
quil mind, and though a few persons of education 
were present, advanced some length in the service 
with my confidence andself-possessionunimpaired; 
but when I saw Burns, who was of a different 
parish, unexpectedly enter the church, I was af- 
fected with a tremor and embarrassment, which 
suddenly apprised me of the impression which my 
mind, unknown to itself, had previously received." 
The Professor adds, that the person who had thus 
unconsciously been measuring the stature of the 
intellectual giant, was not only a man of good ta- 
lents and education, but *' remarkable for a more 
than ordinary portion of constitutional firmness."* 
Every Scotch peasant who makes any preten- 
sion to understanding, is a theological critic — at 
least such was the case — and Burns, no doubt, had 
long ere this time distinguished himself conside- 
rably among those hard-headed groups that may 
usually be seen gathered together in the church- 
yard after the sermon is over. It may be guessed 
that from the time of his residence at Irving, his 
strictures were too often delivered in no reverend 
vein. " Polemical divinity," says he to Dr. Moore, 
in 1787, " about this time, was putting the coun- 
try half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in con- 
versation. parties on Sundays, at funerals, &c., used 
to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indis- 

M^ifc prefixed to Morrison's Burns, p. 45. 



66 LIFE OP 

cretion, that I raised a hue-and-cry of heresy 
against me, which has not ceased to this hour." 
There are some plain allusions to this matter in 
Mr. David Sillar's letter, already quoted, and a 
surviving friend told Allan Cunningham, the other 
day, " that he first saw Burns on the afternoon of 
the Monday of a Mauchline sacrament, lounging 
on horseback at the door of a public house, hold- 
ing forth on religious topics to a whole crowd of 
country people, who presently became so much 
shocked with his levities, that they fairly hissed 
him from the ground." 

To understand Burns' situation at this time, at 
once patronized by a number of clergymen, and 
attended with "a hue-and-cry of heresy," we must 
remember his own words, " that polemical divini- 
ty was putting the country half mad." Of both 
the two parties which, ever since the revolution 
of 1688, have pretty equally divided the Church 
of Scotland, it so happened that some of the most 
zealous and conspicuous leaders and partisans 
were thus opposed to each other, in constant 
warfare, in this particular district ; and their feuds 
being of course taken up among their congrega- 
tions, and spleen and prejudice at work, even 
more furiously in the cottage than in tlie manse, he 
who, to the annoyance of the one set of belligerents, 
could talk like Burns, might count pretty surely, 
with whatever alloy his wit happened to be min- 
gled, in whatever shape the precious " circulat- 
ing medium" might be cast, on the applause and 
countenance of the enemy. And it is needless 
to add, they were the less scrupulous sect of the 
two that enjoyed the co-operation, such as it was 
then, and far more important, as in the sequel it 
came to be, of our poet. 



ROBERT BFRNS. 67 

William Burnes,aswehave already seen, though 
u most exemplary and devout man, entertained 
opinions very different from those which common- 
ly obtained among the rigid Calvinists of his dis- 
trict. The worthy and pious old man himself, 
therefore, had not improbably infused into his 
Tson's mind its first prejudice against these persons ; 
though had he lived to witness the manner in 
which Robert assailed them, there can be no doubt 
•his sorrow would have equalled their anger. The 
jovial spirits with whom Burns associated at Ir- 
vine, and afterwards, were of course habitual de- 
fpiders of the manners, as well as the tenets of the 

"Qrihodox, orthodox, wha believe in John Knox." 

We have already observed the effect of the young 
poet's own first collision with the ruling powers of 
presbyterian discipline ; but it was in the very act 
*of settling at Mossgiel that Burns formed the con- 
nection, which, more than any circumstance be- 
sides, influenced him as to the matter now in ques- 
'tion. The farm belonged to the estate of the Earl 
'of Loudon, but the brothers held it on a sub-lease 
from Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer (i. e. attorney) 
in Mauchline, a man, by every account, of en- 
gaging manners, open, kind, generous, and high- 
spirited, between whom and Robert Burns, in spite 
'of considerable inequality of condition, a close 
^nd intimate friendship was ere long formed. Just 
about this time it happened that Hamilton was at 
open feud with Mr. Auld, the minister of Mauch- 
line, (the same who had already rebuked the poet,) 
and the ruling elders of the parish, in consequence 
of certain irregularities in his personal conduct 
and deportment, which, according to the usual 
strict notions of kirk discipluie, were considered 
6 



08 LIFE OF 

as fairly demanding the vigorous inteference of 
these authorities. The notice of this person, his 
own landlord, and as it would seem, one of the 
principal inhahitants of the village of Mauchline 
at the time, must, of course, have been very flat- 
tering to our polemical young farmer. He es- 
poused Gavin Hamilton's quarrel warmly, Ha- 
milton was naturally enough disposed to mix up 
his personal affair with the standing controversies 
whereon Auld was at variance with a lai-ge and 
powerful body of his brother clergymen ; and by 
degrees Mr. Hamilton's ardent protege came to be 
as vehemently interested in the church politics of 
Ayrshire, as he could have been in politics of an- 
other order, had he happened to be a freeman of 
some open borough, and his patron a candidate 
for the honor of representing it in St. Stephen's, 
Mr. Cromek has been severely criticised for 
some details of Mr. Gavin Hamilton's dissentions 
with his parish minister ;* but perhaps it might 
have been well to limit the censure to the tone 
and spirit of the narrative,"|* since there is no doubt 
that these petty squabbles had a large share in di- 
recting the early energies of Burns' poetical ta- 
lents. Even in the west of Scotland, such mat- 
ters would hardly excite much notice now-a-days, 
but they were quite enough to produce a world of 
vexation and controversy forty years ago ; and the 
English reader to whom all such details are de- 
nied, will certainly never be able to comprehend 
eitherthemeritsordemerits of many of Burns'most 
remarkable productions. Since I have touched on 
this matter at all, I may as well add, that Hamil- 
ton's family, though professedly adhering (as, ia 

* Eding-burg-h Review, vol. Xlll. p. 273. 
t Rciiqucs, p. 1G4., &c. 



ROBERT BURNS. 69 

deed, if they were to be Christians at all in that dis- 
trict, they must needs have done) to the Presbyte- 
rian Establishment, had always lain under a strong 
suspicion of Episcopalianism. Gavin's grandfa- 
ther had been curate of Kirkoswald's in the trou- 
bled times that preceded the Revolution, and in- 
curred great and lasting popular hatred, in conse- 
quence of being supposed to have had a principal 
hand in bringino; a thousand of the Highland host 
into that region in 1787-8. The district was com- 
monly said not to have entirely recovered the ef- 
fects of that savage visitation in less than a hun- 
dred years ; and the descendants and representa- 
tives of the Covenanters, whom the curate of Kirk- 
oswald's had the reputation at least of persecuting, 
were commonly supposed to regard with anything 
rather than ready good-will, his grandson, the 
witty writer of Mauchline. A well-nursed preju- 
dice of this kind v/as likely enough to be met by 
counter-spleen, and such seems to have been the 
truth of the case. The lapse of another genera- 
tion has sufficed to wipe out every trace of feuds, 
that were stiil abundantly discernible, in the days 
when Ayrshire first began to ring v/ith the equally 
zealous applause and vituperation of, 

"Poet Burn?, 
"And his priest-skclping- turns." 

It is impossible to look back now to the civil 
war, which then raged among the churchmen of 
the west of Scotland, without confessing, that on 
either side there w^as much to regret, and not a 
little to blame. Proud and haughty spirits were 
unfortunately opposed to each other; and in the 
superabundant display of zeal as to doctrinal points, 
neither party seems to have mingled much of the 
charity of the Christian temper. The whole exhi- 



70 LIFU OF 

bition was most unlovely — the spectacle of such 
indecent violence among the leading Ecclesias- 
tics of the district, acted most unfavourably on 
many men's minds — and no one can doubt that in 
the at best unsettled state of Robert Burns' prin- 
ciples, the unhappy eflect must have been power- 
ful indeed as to him. 

Macgill and Dalrymple, the two ministers of the 
town of Ayr, had long been suspected of entertain- 
ing heterodox opinions on several points, particu- 
larly the doctrine of original sin, and even of the 
Trinity ; and the former at length published an 
Essay, which was considered as demanding the 
notice of the Church-courts. More than a year was 
spent in the discussions which arose out of this ; 
and at last Dr. Macgill was fain to acknowledge 
his errors, and promise that he would take an early 
opportunity of apologizing for them to his own 
congregation from the pulpit— which promise,how- 
ever, he never performed. The gentry of the coun- 
try took, for the most part, the side of Macgill, 
who was a man of cold unpopular manners, but of 
unreproached moral character, and possessed of 
some accomplishments, though certainly not of 
distinguished talents. The bulk of the lower or- 
ders espoused, with far more fervid zeal, the cause 
of those who conducted the prosecution against 
this erring doctor. Gavin Hamilton, and all per- 
sons of his stamp, were of course on the side of 
Macgill — Auld, and the Mauchline elders, with 
his enemies. Mr. Robert Aiken, a writer in Ayr, 
a man of remarkable talents, particularly in pub- 
lic speaking, had the principal management of 
Macgill's cause before the Presbytery, and, I be- 
lieve, also before the Synod. He was an intimate 
friend of Hamilton, and through him had about 



EOBURT BUR^-S. 71 

this time formed an acquaintance, which soon ri- 
pened into a warm friendship, with Burns. Burns, 
therefore, was from the beginning a zealous, as 
in the end he was perhaps the most effective par- 
tizan, of the side on which Aiken had staked so 
much of his reputation. Macgill, Dah-ymple, and 
their brethren, suspected, with more or less jus- 
tice, of leaning to heterodox opinions, are the 
New Light pastors of his earliest satires. 

The prominent antagonists of these men, and 
chosen champions of the Auld Light, in Ayrshire, 
it must now be admitted on all hands, presented, 
in many particulars of personal conduct and de- 
meanor, as broad a mark as ever tempted the 
shafts of a satirist. These men prided themselves 
on being the legitimate and undegenerate descend- 
ants and representatives of the haughty Puritans, 
who chiefly conducted the overthrow of Popery in 
Scotland, and who ruled for a tim.e, and would 
fain have continued to rule, over both king and 
people, with a more tyrannical dominion than ever 
the Catholic priesthood itself had been able to ex- 
ercise amidst that high-spirited nation. With the 
horrors of the Papal system forever in their 
mouths, these men were in fact as bigoted monks, 
and almost as relentless inquisitors in their hearts, 
as ever v/ore cowl and cord — austere and ungra- 
cious of aspect, coarse and repulsive of address 
and manners— very Pharisees as to the lesser mat- 
ters of the law, and many of diem, to all outward 
appearance at least, overflowing with pharisaical 
self-conceit, as well as monastic bile. That ad- 
mirable qualities lay concealed underthis ungainly- 
exterior, and mingled with and checked the worst 
of these gloomy passions, no candid man will per- 
mit huiisclf to doubt or suspect for a moment ; and 
6* 



72 LIFE OF 

that Burns has grossly overcharged his portraits 
of them, deepening shadows that were of them- 
selves sufficiently dark, and excluding altogether 
those brighter, and perhaps softer, traits of cha- 
racter, which redeemed the originals within the 
sympathies of many of the worthiest and best of 
men, seems equally clear. Their bitterest ene- 
mies dared not at least to bring against them, even 
when the feud was at its height of fervor, charges 
of that heinous sort, which they fearlessly, and I 
fear justly, preferred against their antagonists. 
No one ever accused them of signing the Articles, 
administering the sacraments,and eating the bread 
of a Church, whose fundamental doctrines they 
disbelieved, and,by insinuation at least, disavowed. 
The law of Church-patronage was another sub- 
ject on which controversy ran high and furious in 
the district at the same period ; the actual condi- 
tion of things on this head being upheld by all the 
men of the New Light, and condemned as equally 
at variance with the precepts of the gospel, and 
the rights of freemen, by not a few of the other 
party, and, in particular, by certain conspicuous 
zealots in the immediate neighborhood of Burns, 
While this warfare raged, there broke out an in- 
testine discord within the camp of the faction 
which he loved not. Two of the foremost leaders 
of the Auld Light party quarrelled about a ques- 
tion of parish boundaries ; the matter was taken up 
in the Presbytery of Kilmarnock, and there, in the 
open court, to which the announcement of the dis- 
cussion had drawn a multitude of the country peo- 
ple, and Burns among the'rest, the reverend di- 
vines, hitherto sworn friends and associates, lost 
all command of temper, and abused each other co- 
ram populo, with a fiery virulence of personal in- 



ROBERT BURNS. 73 

vective, such as has long been banished from all 
popular assemblies, wherein the laws of courtesy- 
are enforced by those of a certain unwritten code. 

" The first of my poetic offspring that saw the 
light," says Burns, " was a burlesque lamentation 
on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both 
of them dramatis personce. in my Holy Fair, I 
had a notion myself, that the piece had some me- 
rit ; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it 
to a friend who was very fond of such things, and 
told him that I could not guess who was the au- 
thor of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With 
a certain description of the clergy, as well as 
laity, it met with a roar of applause,''^ 

This was The Holy Tuilzie, or Twa Herds, a 
piece not given either by Currie or Gilbert Burns, 
though printed without scruple by the Rev. Ha- 
milton Paul, and certainly omitted, for no very in- 
telligible reason, in editions where The Holy Fair, 
The Ordination, <^c., found admittance. The two 
herds, or pastors, were Mr. Moodie, minister of 
Riccartoun, and that favorite victim of Burns' 
John Russell, then minister at Kilmarnock, and 
afterwards of Stirling. 

" From this time," Burns says, " I began to be 
known in the country as a maker of rhymes, . . 
Holy Willie^s Prayer next made its appearance, 
and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they 
held several meetings to look over their spiritual 
artillery, and see if any of it might be pointed 
against profane rhymers :" — and to a place among 
profane rhymers, the author of this terrible inflic- 
tion had unquestionably established his right. Sir 
Walter Scott speaks of it as " a piece of satire 
more exquisitely severe than any which Burns 
ever afterwards wrote— but unfortunately cast in a 



74 LIFE OF 

form too daringly profunc to be received into Dr* 
Currie's collection."* Burns' reverend editor, Mr. 
Paul, nevertheless presents Holy Willie's Prayer 
at full length ; and even calls on the friends of re- 
ligion to bless the memory of the poet who took 
such a judicious method of " leading the liberal 
mind to a rational view of the nature of prayer." 
" This," says that bold commentator, " was not 
only the prayer of Floly Willie, but it is merely 
the metrical version of every prayer that is offered 
up by those who call themselves the pure reform- 
ed church of Scotland. In the course of his read- 
ing and polemical w^arfare. Burns embraced and 
defended the opinions of Taylor of Norwich, Mac- 
gill, and that school of Divines. He could not re- 
concile his mind to that picture of the Being, whose 
very essence is love, which is drawn by the high 
Calvinists or the representatives of the Covenant- 
ers — namely, that he is disposed to grant salva- 
tion to none but a fev/ of their sect ; that the whole 
Pagan world, the disciples of Mahomet, the Roman 
Catholics, tlie Lutherans, and even the Calvinists 
who differ from them in certain tenets, must, like 
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, descend to the pit of 
perdition, man, woman, and child, without the pes- 
sibility of escape ; but such are the identical doc- 
trines of the Cameronians of the present day, and 
such was Holy Willie's style of prayer. The hy- 
pocrisy and dishonesty of the man, who was at the 
time a reputed saint, were perceived by the dis- 
cerning penetration of Burns, and to expose them he 
considered his duty. The terrible viev/ of the De- 
ity exhibited in that able production is precisely 
the same view which is given of him, in different 

* auartcily Review, No. I. p. 22. 



ROBERT BURNS. 75 

words, by many devout preachers at present. 
They inculcate, that the greatest sinner is the 
greatest favorite of heaven — that a reformed bawd 
is more acceptable to the Almighty than a pure 
virgin, who has hardly ever transgressed even in 
thought — that the lost sheep alone will be saved, 
and that the ninety-and-nine out of the hundred 
will be left in the wilderness, to perish without 
mercy — that the Savior of the world loves the 
elect, not from any lovely qualities which they pos- 
sess, for they are hateful in his sight, but ' he loves 
them because he loves them.' Such are the sen- 
timents which are breathed by those who are de- 
nominated High Calvinists, and from which the 
soul of a poet who loves mankind, and who has 
not studied the system in all its bearings, recoils 
with horror. . . . The gloomy, forbidding repre- 
sentation which they give of the Supreme Being, 
has a tendency to produce insanity, and lead to 
suicide." — Life of Burns, pp. 40 — 41. 

The Reverend HamiltonPaul maybe considered 
as expressing in the above, and in other passages 
of a similar tendency, the sentiments with which 
even the most audacious of Burns' anti-Calvinis- 
tic satires were received among the Ayrshire di- 
vines of the New Light; that performances so blas- 
phemous should have been, not only pardoned, but 
applauded by ministers of religion, is a singular 
circumstance, which may go far to make the reader 
comprehend the exaggerated state of party feeling 
in Burns' native county, at the period when he 
first appealed to the public ear : nor is it fair to 
pronounce sentence upon the young and reckless 
satirist, without taking into consideration the un- 
deniable fact — that in his worst offenses of this 
kind, he was encouraged and abetted by those, 



76 LIFE OF 

who, to say nothing more about their professional 
character and authority, were ahucst the only 
persons of liberal education whose society he had 
any opportunity of approaching at the period in 
question. Had Burns received, at this time, from 
his clerical friends and patrons, such advice as 
was tendered, when rather too late, by a layman 
who was as far from bigotry on religious subjects 
as any man in the world, this great genius might 
have made his first approaches to the public no- 
tice in a very different character. 

" Let your bright talents," — (thus wrote the ex- 
cellent John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, in October 
1787;) — " Let those bright talents Vvhich the Al- 
mighty has bestowed on you, be henceforth em- 
ployed to the noble purpose of supporting the cause 
of truth and virtue. An imagination so varied and 
forcible as yours, may do this in many different 
modes ; nor is it necessary to be always serious, 
which you have been to good purpose ; good mo- 
rals may be recommended in a comedy, or even in 
a song. Great allowances are due to the heat and 
inexperience of youth ; — and few poets can boast, 
like Thomson, of never having written a line, 
which, dying, they would wish to blot. In particular, 
I wish you to keep clear of the thorny walks of sa- 
tire, which makes a man a hundred enemies for 
one friend, and is doubly dangerous when one is 
supposed to extend the slips and weaknesses of in- 
dividuals to their sect or parly. About modes of 
faith, serious and excellent men have always dif- 
fered ; and there are certain curious questions, 
which may alTord scope to men of metaphysical 
heads, but seldom mend the heart or temper. 
Whilst these points are beyond human ken, it is 



ROBERT BURXS. 77 

sufiicieiit that all our sects concur in their views 
of morals. You will forgive me for these hints." 
Few such hints, it is likely, ever reached his 
ears in the days when they might have been most 
useful — ^days of which the principal honors and 
distinctions are thus alluded to by himself: 

"I've been at drunken writers' feasts: 
Nay, been bitch-fou 'mang- g-odly priests." 

It is amusing to observe how soon even really 
Bucolic bards learn the tricks of their trade : Burns 
knew already what lustre a compliment gains from 
being set in sarcasm, when he made Willie call 
for special notice to 



"Gaun Hamilton's deserts, 



He drinks, and swears, and plays at carts ; 
Yet has sac mony takin' arts 

Wi' g-reat and sma', 
Frae God's ain priests the people's hearts 

He steals awa," &c. 

Nor is his other patron, Aiken, introduced with 
inferior skill, as having merited Willie's most fer- 
vent execration by his " glib-tongued" defense of 
the heterodox doctor of Ayr : 

='Lord ! visit them v/ha did employ him, 
And for thy people's sake destroy 'em." 

Burns owed a compliment to this gentleman's 
elocutionary talents. " I never knew there was 
any merit in my poems," said he, "until Mr. 
Aiken read them into repute." 

Encouraged by the "roar of applause " which 
greeted these pieces, thus orally promulgated and 
recommended, he produced in succession various 
satires wherein the same set of persons were lash- 
ed ; as The Ordination ; The Kirk's Alarm ; &c. 
<fec.,; and last, and best undoubtedly. The Holy 



78 LIFE OF 

Fair, in which, unlike the others that have been 
mentioned, satire keeps its own place, and is sub- 
servient to the poetry of Burns. This was, indeed, 
an extraordinary performance ; no partizan of any 
sect could whisper that malice had formed its prin- 
cipal inspiration, or that its chief attraction lay in 
the boldness with which individuals, entitled and 
accustomed to respect, were held up to ridicule ; it 
was acknowledged amidst the sternest mutterings 
of wrath, that national manners were once more in 
the hands of a national poet ; and hardly denied by 
those who shook their heads the most gravely over 
the indiscretions of particular passages, or even 
by those who justly regretted a too prevailing tone 
of levity in the treatment of a subject essentially 
solemn, that the Muse of Christ's Kirk on the 
Green had awakened, after the slumber of ages, 
with all the vigor of her regal youth about her, in 
*'the auld clay biggin" of Mossgiel. 

T/ie/ZbZ^/JPm?', however, created admiration, not 
surprise, among the circle of domestic friends who 
had been admitted to watch the steps of his pro- 
gress in an art of which, be5^ond that circle, little 
or nothing was heard until the youthful poet pro- 
duced at length a satirical master-piece. It is not 
possible to reconcile the statements of Gilbert and 
others, as to some of the minutite of the chronolo- 
gical history of Burns' previous performances; but 
there can be no doubt, that although from choice 
or accident, his first provincial fame was that of a 
satirist, he had, some time before any of his philip- 
pics on the Auld Light divines made their appear- 
ance, exhibited to those who enjoyed his personal 
confidence, a range of imaginative power hardly 
inferior to what the Holy i^air itself displays; and, 
at least, such a rapidly improving skill in poetical 



ROBERT BURNS. 79 

language and versification, as must have prepared 
them for witnessing without wonder, even the most 
perfect specimens of his art. 

Gilbert says, that " among the earliest of his 
poems," was the Epistle to Davie, (z. e. Mr. Da- 
vid Sillar,) and Mr. Walker believes that this was 
written very soon afterthe deathofWilliamBurnes. 
This piece is inthe very intricate and difficult mea- 
sure of the Cherry andtheSlae ; and, on the whole, 
the poet moves with ease and grace in his very un- 
necessary trammels ; but young poets are careless 
beforehand of difficulties which would startle the 
experienced ; and great poets may overcome any 
difficulties if they once grapple with them; so that 
I should rather ground my distrust of Gilbert's 
statement, if it must be literally taken, on the ce- 
lebration of Jean, with which the epistle termi- 
nates : and, after all, she is celebrated in the con- 
cluding stanzas, which may have been added some 
time after the first draft. The gloomy circum- 
stances of the poet's personal condition, as de- 
scribed in this piece, were common, it cannot be 
doubted, to all the j^ears of his youthful history ; 
so that no particular date is to be founded upon 
these ; and if this was the first, certainly it was 
not the last occasion, on which Burns exercised 
his fancy in the coloring of the very worst issue 
that could attend a life of unsuccessful toil. But 
Gilbert's recollections, however on trivial points 
inaccurate, will always be more interesting than 
anything that could be put in their place. 

" Robert," says he, " often composed without 
any regular plan. When anything made a strong 
impression on his mind, so as to rouse it to poetic 
exertion, he would give way to the impulse, and 
embody the thought in rhyme. If he hit on two 
7 



80 LIFE OF 

or throe stanzas to please him, he would then 
think of proper introductory, connecting, and con- 
cluding stanzas ; hence the middle of a poem was 
often first produced. It was, I thiniv, in summer 
1784, when in the interval of harder labor, he 
and I were weedingin the garden, (kail-yard,) that 
he repeated to me the principal part of this epistle 
(to Davie). I beUeve the first idea of Robert's 
becoming an author was started on this occasion. 
I was much pleased with the epistle, and said to 
him, I wasof opinion it v/ould bear being printed, 
and that it would be well received by people of 
taste ; that I thought it at last equal, if not supe- 
rior, to many of Allan Ramsay's epistles, and that 
the merit of these, and much other Scotch poetry, 
seemed to consist principally in the knack of the 
expression — but here, there was a strain of inter- 
esting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the lan- 
guage scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to 
be the natural language of the poet ; that, besides, 
there was certainly some novelty in a poet point- 
ing out the consolations that were in store for him 
when he should go a-begging. Robert seemed 
very well pleased with my criticism, and we talked 
of sending it to some magazine ; but as this plan 
afforded no opportunity of knowing how it would 
take, the idea was dropped. 

" It was, I think, in the winter following, as we 
were going together with carts for coal to the 
family, (and I could yet point out the particu- 
lar spot,) that the author first repeated to me the 
Address to the Deil. The curious idea of such an 
address was suggested to him, by running over in 
his mind the many ludicrous accounts and repre- 
sentations we have, from various quarters, of this 
august personage. Death and Doctor Hornbook, 



ROBERT BURNS. 81 

though not pubhshed m the Kilmarnock edition, 
was producedearly in the year 1785. The school- 
master of Tarbolton parish, to eke up the scanty 
subsistence allowed to that useful class of men, had 
set up a shop of grocery goods. Having acciden- 
tally fallen in with some medical books, and 
become most hobby-horsically attached to the 
study of medicine, he had added the sale of a few 
medicines to his little trade. He had got a 
shop-bill printed, at the bottom of which, over- 
looking his own incapacity, he had advertised, 
that " Advice would be given in common disorders 
at the shop gratis." Robert was at a mason 
meeting in Tarbolton, when the Do^r.inie unfortu- 
nately made too ostentatious a display of his me- 
dical skill. As he parted in the evening from 
this mixture of pedantry and physic, at the place 
where he describes his meeting with Death, one 
of those floating ideas of apparitions, he mentions 
in his letter to Dr. Moore, crossed his mind ; this 
set him to work for the rest of the way home. 
These circumstances he related when he repeated 
the verses to me next afternoon, as I was holding 
the plough, and he was letting the water ofl" the 
field beside me. The Epistle to John Lapraik 
was produced exactly on the occasion described 
by the author. He says in that poem. On 
Fasten-e'en we had a rockhi' (p. 235). I believe he 
has omitted the word rocking in the glossary. It 
is a term derived from those primitive times, when 
the country-women employed their spare hours 
in spinning on the rock, or distaff. This simple 
implement is a very portable one, and well fitted 
to the social inclination of meeting in a neigh, 
bor's house ; hence the phrase of going a-rochingy 
ov with the rocJc. As the connection the phrase 



82 LIFE OF 

had with the implement was forgotten when the 
rock gave place to the spinning-wheel, the phrase 
came to be used by both sexes on social occa- 
sions, and men talk of going with their rocks as 
well as women. It was at one of these rockings 
at our house, when we had twelve or fifteen young 
people with their 7'ocJis, that Lapraik's song be- 
ginning — " When I upon thy bosom lean,"* was 
sung, and we were informed who was the author. 
Upon this Robert wrote his first epistle to La- 
praik ; and his second in reply to his answer. The 
verses to the Mouse and Mountain Daisy were 
composed on the occasion mentioned and while 
the author was holding the plough ; I could point 
out the particular spot where each was composed. 
Holding the plough was a favorite situation -with 
Robert for'poetic compositions, and some of his 
best verses were produced while he was at that 
exercise. Several of the poems were produced 
for the purpose of bringing forward some favor- 
ite sentiment of the author. He used to remark 
to me, that he could not well conceive a more 
mortifying picture of human life, than a man 
seeking work. In casting about in his mind how 
this sentiment might be brought forward, the elegy, 
Man was made to Mourn, was composed. Robert 
had frequently remarked to me, that he thought 
there was something peculiarly venerable in the 
phrase, ' Let us worship God,' used by a decent, 
sober head of a family introducing family worship. 

* Burns was never a fastidious critic ; but it is not very 
easy to understand his admiration of Lapraik's poetry. Em- 
boldened by Burns' success, he, too, published ; but the only 
one of his productions that is ever remembered now is this ; 
'and even this survives chiefly because Burns has praised it. 
The opening- verse, however, is pretty. It may be seen at 
length in Allan Cunningham's "Scottish Song-s," vol. iii. 
p. 290. 



ROIiilRT BUKNS. 83 

To this sentiment of the author the world is in- 
debted for the Cottar's Saturday Night. The 
hint of the plan, and title of the poem, were taken 
from Ferguson's Farmer's Ingle. 

"When Robert had not some pleasure in view, in 
which I was not thought fit to participate, we used 
frequently to walk together, when the weatlier was 
favorable, on the Sunday afiernoons, (those pre- 
cious breathing-times to the laboring part of the 
community,) and enjoyed such Sundays as would 
make one regret to see their number abridged. 
It was in one of these walks that I first had the 
pleasure of hearing the author repeat the Cottar's 
Saturday Night. I do not recollect to have read 
or heard any thing by which I was more highly 
electrified. The Fifth and sixth stanzas, and the 
eighteenth, thrilled with peculiar ecstasy through 
my soul." 

The poems mentioned by Gilbert Burns in the 
above extract, are among the most popular of his 
brother's performances ; and there may be a time 
for recurring to some of their peculiar merits as 
works of art. It may be mentioned here, that 
John Wilson, alias Dr. Hornbook, was not merely 
compelled to shut up shop as an apothecary, or 
druggist rather, by the satire which bears his name ; 
but so irresistible was the tide of ridicule, that 
his pupils, one by one, deserted him, and he aban- 
doned his Schoolcraft also. Removing to Glasgow, 
and turning himself successfully to commercial 
pursuits, Dr, Hornbook, survived the local storm 
which he could not ellectually withstand, and was 
often heard in his latter days, when waxing cheer- 
ful and communicative over a bowl of punch, " in 
the Sahmarkct," to bless the lucky hour in which 
the dominie of Tarbolton provoked the castigation 
7* 



84 LIFE OF 

of Robert Burns. In those days the Scotch uni- 
versities did not turn out doctors of physic by the 
hundred, according to the modern fashion introdu- 
ced by the necessities of the French revolutionary 
war ; Mr. Wilson's was probably the only medicine 
chest from which salts and senna were distributed 
for the benefit of a considerable circuit of pa- 
rishes ; and his advice, to say the least of the 
matter, was perhaps as good as could be had, for 
love or money, among the wise women who were 
the only rivals of his practice. The poem which 
drove him from Ayrshire was not, we may be- 
lieve, either expected or designed to produce any 
such serious effect. Poor Hornbook and the 
poet were old acquaintances, and in some sort 
rival wits at the time in the mason lodge. 

In Man was made to Mourn, whatever might 
be the casual idea that set the poet to work, it 
is but too evident, that he wrote from the habi- 
tual feelings of his own bosom. The indignation 
with which he through life contemplated the in- 
equality of human condition, and particularly, 
— and who shall say, with absolute injustice? — the 
contrast between his own worldly circumstances 
and intellectual rank, was never more bitterly, nor 
more loftily expressed, than in some of those 
stanzas. 

" See yonder poor, o'erlabor'd wight, 

So abject, mean, and vile, 
Who beg-s a brother of the earth 

To g-ive him leave to toil. 
If I'm desig"n'd yon lordling-'s slave — 

By Nature's laws design'd — 
Why was an independent wish 

E'er planted in my mind 7" 

The same feeling strong, but triumphed over in 
the moment of inspiration, as it ought ever to 



ROBERT BURNS. 85 

have been in the plain exercise of such an under- 
standing as his, may be read in every stanza of 
the Epistle to Davie, 

" It's no in titles nor in rank, 
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest ; 
It's no in books, it's no in lear, 

To mak us truly blest 

Think ye, that such as you and I, 
Whadrudg-e and drive through wet and dry, 

Wi' never-ceasing- toil ; 
Think ye, are we less blest than they, 
Wha scarcely tent us in their way, 

As hardly worth their while 7" 

In Man was made to Mourn, Burns appears to 
have taken many hints from an ancient ballad, en- 
titled The Life and Age of Man, which begins 
thus : 

" Upon the sixteen hunder year of God, and fifty-three, 
Frae Christ was born, that boug^ht us dear, as writing's 

testitic ; 
On January the sixteenth day, as I did lie alone, ^ 
With many a sigh and sob did say — Ah ! man is made to 

moan !" 

" I had an old grand uncle," says the poet, in 
one of his letters to Mrs. Dunlop, " with whom 
my mother lived in her girlish years ; the good old 
man, for such he was, was blind long ere he died ; 
during which time his highest enjoyment was to 
sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the 
simple old song of The Life and Age of Man,''* 

The Cottar's Saturday Night is perhaps, of 
all Burns' pieces, the one whose exclusion from 

* This ballad may be seen in Cromek's Select Scottish 
Songs. 



80 LIl E OF 

the collection, were such things possible now-a- 
days, would be the most injurious, if not to the, 
genius, at least to the character, of the man. In 
spite of many feeble lines, and some heavy stan- 
zas, it appears to me, that even his genius would 
sujfer more in estimation, by being contemplated 
in the absence of this poem, tlian of any other 
single performance he has left us. Loftier flights 
he certainly has made, but in these he remained 
but a short while on the wing, and effort is too 
often perceptible ; here the motion is easy, gen- 
tle, placidly undulating. There is more of the 
conscious security of power, than in any other of 
his serious pieces of considerable length ; the 
whole has the appearance of coming in a full stream 
from the fountain of the heart — a stream that 
soothes the car, and has no glare on the surface. 

It is delightful to turn from any of the pieces 
which present so great a genius as writhing under 
an inevitable burden, to this, where his buoyant 
energy seems not eveu to feel the pressure. The 
miseries of toil and penury, who shall affect to 
treat as unreal? Yet they shrunli to small dimen- 
sions in the presence of a spirit thus exalted at 
once, and softened, by the pieties of virgin love, 
filial reverence, and domestic devotion. 

That he who thus enthusiastically apprehended, 
and thus exquisitely painted, the artless beauty 
and solemnity of the feelings and thoughts that en- 
noble the life of the Scottish peasant, could wit- 
ness observances in which the very highest of these 
redeeming influences are most powerfully and 
gracefully displayed, and yet describe them in a 
vein of unmixed merriment — that the same man 
should have produced the Cottar^s Saturday 



ROBERT BURNS. 87 

Night and the Holy Fair about the same time — 
will ever continue to move wonder and regret. 

" The annual celebration of the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper in the rural parishes of Scot- 
land has much in it," says the unfortunate Heron, 
*' of those old popish festivals, in which supersti- 
tion, tratfic, and amusement, used to be strangely- 
intermingled. Burns saw and seized in it one of 
the happiest of all subjects to afford scope for the 
display of that strong and piercing sagacity, by 
which he could almost intuitively distinguish the 
reasonable from the absurd, and the becoming from 
the ridiculous; of that picturesque power of fancy 
which enabled him to represent scenes, and per- 
sons, and groups, and looks, and attitudes, and 
gestures, in a manner almost as lively and impres- 
sive, even in words, as if all the artifices and en- 
ergies of the pencil had been employed ; of that 
knowledge which he had necessarily acquired of 
the manners, passions, and prejudices of the rus- 
tics around him — of whatever was ridiculous, no 
less than whatever was affectingly beautiful in 
rural life."* This is very good so far as it goes ; 
but who ever disputed the exquisite graphic truth, 
so far as it goes, of the poem to which the critic 
refers ? The question remains as it stood ; is there 
then nothing besides a strange mixture of super- 
stition, traffic, and amusement, in the scene which 
such an annual celebration in a rural parish of 
Scotland presents ? Does nothing of what is " af- 
fectingly beautiful in rural life," make a part in 
the original which was before the poet's eyes ? 
Were " Superstition," " Hypocrisy," and " Fun," 
the only influences which he might justly have 

* Heron's Memoirs of Burns, (Edinburgh, 1797,) p. 14, 



88 LIFE OF 

impersonated ? It would be hard, I think, to speak 
so even of the old popish festivals to which Mr. 
Heron alludes ; it would be hard surely to say it 
of any festival in which, mingled as they may be 
with sanctimonious pretenders, and surrounded 
with giddy groups of onlookers, a mighty multi- 
tude of devout men are assembled for the worship 
of God, beneath the open heaven, and above the 
tombs of their fathers. 

Let us beware, however, of pushing our censure 
of a young poet, mad with the inspiration of the 
moment, from whatever source derived, too far. 
It can hardly be doubted that the author of the 
CoUar^s Saiurdai) Night had felt, in his time, 
all that any man can feel in the contemplation of 
the most sublime of the religious observances of 
his country ; and as little, that he had taken up the 
subject of this rural sacrament in a solemn mood, 
he might have produced a piece as gravely beauti- 
ful, as his Holy Fair is quaint, graphic;, and pic- 
turesque. A scene of family worship, on the 
other hand, I can easily imagine to have come 
from his hand as pregnant with the ludicrous as 
that Holy Fair itself. The family prayers of the 
Saturday's night, and the rural celebration of the 
Eucharist, are parts of the same system — the sys- 
tem which has made the people of Scotland what 
they are — and what, it is to be hoped, they will 
continue to be. And when men ask of themselves 
what this great national poet really thought of a 
system in which minds immeasurably inferior to 
his can see so much to venerate, it is surely just 
that they should pay most attention to what he has 
delivered under the gravest sanction. In noble 
natures, we may be sure, the source of tears lies 
nearer the heart than that of smiles. 



ROBERT BURNS. 89 

, The Reverend Hamilton Paul does not desert 
his post on occasion of the Holy Fair ; he de- 
fends that piece as manfully as Holy Willie ; and, 
indeed, expressly applauds Burns for having en- 
deavored to explode " abuses discountenanced by 
the General Assembly." The General Assembly 
would no doubt say, both of the poet and the com- 
mentator, non talia auxilio. 

Hallowe'en, a descriptive poem, perhaps even 
more exquisitely wrought than the Holy Fair, and 
containing nothing that could offend the feelings 
of any body, was produced about the same peri- 
od. Burns' art had now reached its climax ; but 
it is time that we should revert more particularly 
to the personal history of the poet. 

He seems to have very soon perceived, that the 
farm of Mossgiel could at the best furnish no more 
than the bare means of existence to so large a fa- 
mily ; and wearied with the " prospects drear," 
from which he only escaped in occasional inter- 
vals of social merriment, or when gay flashes of 
solitary fancy, for they were no more, threw sun- 
shine on every thing, he very naturally took up 
the notion of quitting Scotland for a time, and try- 
ing his fortune in the West Indies, where, as is well 
known, the managers of the plantations are, in the 
great majority of cases, Scotchmen of Burns' own 
rank and condition. His letters show, that on two 
or three different occasions, long before his poet- 
ry had excited any attention, he had applied for, and 
nearly obtained appointments of this sort, through 
the intervention of his acquaintances in the sea- 
port of Irvine. Petty accidents, not worth de- 
scribing, interfered to disappoint him from time to 
time ; but at last a new burst of misfortune ren- 
dered him doubly anxious to escape from his na- 



90 LIFE OF 

tive land ; and but for an accident, which no one 
will call petty, his arrangements would certainly 
have been completed. 

But we must not come quite so rapidly to the 
last of his Ayrshire love-stories. 

How many lesser romances of this order were 
evolved and completed during his residence at 
Mossgiel, it is needless to inquire ; that they were 
many, his songs prove, for in those days he wrote 
no love-songs on imaginary heroines.* Mary 
Morrison — Behind yon liills where Stinchar flows — 
On Cessnot bank there lives a lass — belong to this 
period ; and there are three or four inspired by 
Mary Campbell — the object of by far the deep- 
est passion that ever Burns knew, and which he 
has accordingly immortalized in the noblest of 
his elegiacs. 

In introducing to Mr. Thompson's notice the 
song,— 

" Will ye g-o to the Indies, my Mary, 

And leave auld Scotia's shore? — 
Will ye g-o to the Indies, my Mary, 

Across the Atlantic's roar 7" 

Burns says, " In my early years, when I was 
thinking of going to the West Indies, I took this 
farewell of a dear girl ;" and, afterwards, in a 
note on — 

" Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 

The Castle o' Montgomerie ; 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie ; 
There Summer first unfaulds her robeSj 

And there they lang-est tarry, 
For there I took the last farewell 

O' my sweet Highland Mary." 

* Letters to Mr. Thompson, No. IV. 



ROBERT BURNS. 91 

he adds, — " After a pretty long trial of the most 
ardent reciprocal affection, we met by appoint- 
ment on the second Sunday of May, in a seques- 
tered spot by the banks of Ayr, where we spent 
a day intaking aforewell before she should embark 
for the West Highlands, to arrange matters 
among her friends for our projected change of 
life. At the close of the autumn following she 
crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, where 
she had scarce landed when she was seized with 
a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl to 
her grave in a few days, before I could even hear 
of her illness;" and Mr. Cromek, speaking of the 
same " day of parting love," gives, though with- 
out mentioning his authority, some further parti- 
culars, which no one would willingly believe to 
be apochryphal. " This adieu," says that zealous 
inquirer into the details of Burns' story, " was 
performed with all those simple and striking cere- 
monials, which rustic sentiment has devised to pro- 
long tender emotions, and to impose awe. The 
lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook 
— they laved their hands in the limpid stream — 
and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced 
their vows to be faithful to each other. They parted 
— never to meet again." It is proper to add, that 
Mr. Cromek's story, v/hich even Allan Cunning- 
ham was disposed to receive with suspicion, has 
recently been confirmed very strongly by the ac- 
cidental discovery of a Bible, presented by Burns 
to Mary Campbell, in the possession of her still 
surviving sister at Ardrossan. Upon the boards 
of the first volume is inscribed, in Burns' hand- 
writing, — " And ye shall not swear by my name 
falsely — I am the Lord. — Levit. chap. xix. v. 12." 
On the second volume, — " Thoushalt not forswear 
8 



92 LIFE OF 

thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oath. 
St. Matth. chap, v., v. 33." And on a blank leaf 
of either, — " Robert Burns, Mossgeil." 

How lasting was the poet's remembrance of this 
pure love, and its tragic termination, will be seen 
hereafter.* 

Highland Mary, however seems to have died 
ere her lover had made any of his more serious 
attempts in poetry. In the Epistle to Mr. Sillar, 
(as we have already hinted,) the very earliest, ac- 
cording to Gilbert, of these attempts, the poet 
celebrates " his Davie and his Jean." 

This was Jean Armour, a young woman, a step 
if any thing, above Burns' own rank in life,f the 
daughter of a respectable man, a master-mason, 
in the village of Mauchline, where she was at the 
time the reigning toast, and who still survives, as 
the respected widow of our poet. There are 
numberless allusions to her maiden charms in the 
best pieces which he produced at Mossgeil. 

The time is not yet come, in which all the de- 
tails of this story can be expected. Jean Armour 
found herself " as ladies wish to be that love their 
lords.'^ And how slightly such a circumstance 
might affect the character and reputation of a 
young woman in her sphere of rural life at that 
period, every Scotsman will understand — to any 

* Cromck, p. 238. 

t " In Maucliline there dwells six proper young- belles, 

The pride of the place and its neig-hborhood a' ; 
Their carriag-e and dress, a strang-er would g'wess, 

In Lon'on or Paris they'd gotten it a' : 

" Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine, 
Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw; 

There's beauty and fortune to g-et with Miss Morion, 
But Armour^s the jewel for me o' them a'." 



ROBERT BURNS. 93 

but a Scotsman, it might, perhaps, be diflicuh. to 
explain. The manly readiness with which the 
young rustics commonly come forward to avert 
by m.arriage the worst consequences of such in- 
discretions, cannot be denied ; nor, perhaps, is 
there any class of society in any country, in which 
matrimonial infidelity is less known than among 
the female peasantry of Scotland. 

Burns' worldly circumstances were in a most 
miserable stale when he was informed of Miss Ar- 
mour's condition ; and the first announcement of 
it staggered him like a blow. He saw nothing 
for it but to fly the country at once ; and, in a 
note to James Smith of Mauchline, the confident 
of his amour, he thus wrote : — " Against two 
things I am fixed as fate — staying at home, and 
owning her conjugally. The first, by Heaven, I 
will not do ! — the last, by hell, I will never do ! — A 
good God bless you, and make you happy, up to 
the warmest weeping wish of parting friend- 
ship If you see Jean, tell her I will meet 

her, so help me God in my hour of need." 

The lovers met accordingly ; and the result of 
the meeting was what was to be anticipated from 
the tenderness and the manliness of Burns' feel- 
ings. All dread of personal inconvenience yielded 
at once to the tears of the woman he loved, and 
ere they parted, he gave into her keeping a writ- 
ten acknowledgment of marriage, which, when 
produced by a person in Miss Armour's condition 
is, according to the Scots law, to be accepted as 
legal evidence of an irregular marriage having 
really taken place ; it being of course understood 
that the marriage was to be formally avowed as 
soon as the consequences of their imprudence 
could no longer be concealed from her family. 



94 LIFE Of 

The disclosure was deferred to the last mo- 
ment, and it was received by the father of Miss 
Armour with equal surprise and anger. Burns', 
confessing himself to be unequal to the mainte- 
nance of a family, proposed to go immediately to 
Jamaica, where he hoped to find better fortunes. 
He offered, if this were rejected, to abandon his 
farm, which was by this time a hopeless concern, 
and earn bread at least for his wife and children 
as a daily laborer at home ; but nothing could ap- 
pease the indignation of Armour, who. Professor 
Walker hints, had entertained previously a very 
bad opinion of Burns' whole character. By what 
arguments he prevailed on his daughter to take so 
strange and so painful a step we know not ; but 
the fact is certain, that, at his urgent entreaty, she 
destroyed the document,* which must have been 

♦ The comments of the Rev. Hamilton Paul, on this deli- 
cate part of the poet's story, are too meritorious to be omitted. 

" The scenery of the Ayr," says he, " from Sorn to the an- 
cient burgh at its mouth, thoug-h it may equalled in grandeur 
is "scarcely any where surpassed in beauty. To trace its 
meanders, to wander amid its green woods, to lean over its 
precipitous and rocky banks, to explore its coves, to survey 
its Gothic towers, and to admire its modern edifices, is not 
only highly delightful, but truly inspiring. If the poet, in 
his excursions along the banks of the river, or in penetrating 
into the deepest recesses of the grove, be accompanied by his 
favorite fair one, whose admiration of rural and sylvan beau- 
ty is akin to his own, however hazardous the experiment, the 
bliss is ecstatic. To warn the young and unsuspecting of 
their danger, is only to stimulate their curiosity. The well- 
meant dissuasive of Thomson is more seductive in its ten- 
dency than the admirers ofthat poet's mortality are aware — 

' Ah ! then, ye Fair, 
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts : 
Dare not the infectious sigh— nor in the bower, 
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch, 
While evening draws her crimson curtains round, 
Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.' 



ROBERT BURNS. 95 

to her the most most precious of her possessions — 
the only evidence of her marriage. 

It was under such extraordinary circumstances 
that Miss Armour became the mother of twins. 

Burns' love and pride, the two most powerful 
feelings of his mind, had been equally wounded. 
His anger and grief together drove him, accord- 
ing to every account, to the verge of absolute in- 
sanity ; and some of his letters on this occasion, 
both published and unpublished, have certainly all 
the appearance of having been written in as deep 
a concentration of despair as ever preceded the 
most awful of human calamities. His first thought 
had been, as we have seen, to fly at once from the 
scene of his disgrace and misery ; and this course 
seemed now to be absolutely necessary. He was 
summoned to find security for the maintenance of 
the children whom he was prevented from legiti- 
mating, and such was his poverty that he could 

We are decidedly of opinion, that the inexperienced fair will 
be equally disposed to disregard this sentimental prohibition 
and to accept the invitation of another bard, whose libertin- 
ism is less disguised, — 

"Will you go to the bower I have shaded for you 
your bed shall be roses bespangled with dew." 

' To dear deluding woman 

The joy of joys,' " 

continues this divine, "Burns was partial in the extreme. 
This was owing, as well to his constitutional temperament, 
as to the admiration which he drew from the female world, 
and the facility with which they met his advances. But liis 
aberrations must have been notorious, when a man in ihe 
rank of Miss Armour's fother refused his consent to his per- 
manent union with his unfortunate daughter. Among the 
lower classes of the community, subsequent marriage is 
reckoned an ample atonement for former indiscretion, and 
ante-nuptial incontinency is looked upon as scarcely a trans- 
gression." 

8* 



96 LIFE OF 

not satisfy the parish-officers. I suppose securi- 
ty for some four or five pounds a year was the ut- 
most that could have been demanded from a per- 
son of his rank ; but the man who had in his 
desk the immortal poems to which we have 
been referring above, either disdained to ask, or 
tried in vain to find, pecuniary assistance in his 
hour of need ; and the only alternative that pre- 
sented itself to his view was America or a jail. 

Who can ever learn without grief and indigna- 
tion, that it was the victim of such miseries who, 
at such a moment, could pour out such a strain as 
the Lament ? 

" O thou pale orb, that silent shines, 

While care untroubled mortals sleep ! 
Thou secst a wretch that inly pines, 

And wanders here to wail and weep ! 
With wo I nightly vigils keep, 

Beneath thy wan unwarming- beam ; 
And mourn, in lamentation deep, 

How life and love are all a dream. 

" No idly-feign'd poetic plaints. 

My sad, love-lorn lamentings claim ; 
No shepherd's pipe — Arcadian strains ; 

No fabled tortures, quaint and tame ; 
The plighted faith ; the mutual flame ; 

The oft attested Pow'rs above ; 
The promised Father'' s tender name ; 

These were the pledges of my love !" 



ROBERT BURNS. 97 



CHAPTER IV. 

" He saw misfortune s cauld nor^-icest, 
Lang mustering- up a bitter blast ; 
A jillet brak his heart at last, 

111 may she be ! 
S05 took a berth afore the mast, 

An owre the sea." 

Jamaica was now his mark, and after some lit- 
tle time, and not a little trouble, the situation of 
assistant-overseer on the estate of a Dr. Douglas 
in that colony, was procured for him by one of his 
friends in the town of Irvine. Money to pay for 
his passage, however, he had not ; and it at last oc- 
curred to him that the few pounds requisite for this 
purpose, might be raised by the publication of some 
of the finest poems that ever delighted mankind. 

His landlord, Gavin Hamilton, Mr. Aiken, and 
other friends, encouraged him vv^armly ; and after 
some hesitation, he at length resolved to hazard an 
experiment which might perhaps better his circum- 
stances; and,if any tolerable number of subscribers 
could be procured, could not make them worse 
than they were already. His rural patrons exerte.d 
themselves with success in the matter ; and so 
many copies were soon subscribed for, that Burns 
entered into terms with a printer in Kilmarnock, 
and began to Copy out his performances for the 
press. He carried his MSS. piecemeal to the 
printer ; and encouraged by the ray of light which 
unexpected patronage had begun to throw on 



98 LIFE OF 

his affairs, composed, while the printing was in 
progress, some of the best poems of the collec- 
tion. The tale of the Twa Dogs, for instance, 
with which the volume commenced, is known to 
have been written in the short interval between 
the publication being determined on and the print- 
ing begun. His own account of the business to 
Dr. Moore is as follows : 

" I gave up my part of the farm to my brother : 
in truth, it was only nominally mine ; and made 
what little preparation was in my power for Ja- 
maica. But before leaving my native land, I re- 
solved to publish my poems. I weighed my pro- 
ductions as impartially as was in my power : I 
thought they had merit ; and it was a delicious idea 
that 1 should be called a clever fellow, even though 
it should never reach my ears-a poor negro-driver 
— or, perhaps, a victim to that inhospitable clime, 
and gone to the world of spirits. I can truly say 
that 'pauvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty 
nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works 
as I have at this moment when the public has de- 
cided in their favor. It ever was my opinion, that 
the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and 
religiouspointofview, of which we see thousands 
daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of them- 
selves. To know myself, had been all along my 
constant study. I weighed myself alone ; I ba- 
lanced myself with others : I watched every means 
of information, to sec how much ground I occupied 
as a man and as a poet : I studied assiduously Na- 
ture's design in my formation — where the lights 
and shades in character were intended. I was 
pretty confident my poems would meet with some 
applause ; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlan- 
tic would deafen the voice of censure, and the no- 



ROBERT BURNS. 



velty of West Indian scenes make me forget ne- 
glect. I threw off six hundred copies, for which I 
got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.* 
My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I 
met with from the public ; and besides, I pocketed, 
all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. 
This sum came very seasonably, as I was think- 
ing of indenting myself, for want of money to 
procure my passage. As soon as I was master of 
nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the tor- 
rid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first 
ship that was to sail from the Clyde ; for- 

' Hungry ruin had me in the wind.' 

"I had been for some days skulkingfrom covert 
to covert, under all the terrors of a jail ; as some 
ill-advised people had uncoupled the merciless 
pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the last 
farewell of my few friends ; my chest was on the 
road to Greenock ; I had composed the last song 
I should ever measure in Caledonia. The gloomy 
night is gathering fast, when a letter from Dr. 
Blacklock to a friend of mine, overthrew all my 
schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic 
ambition." 

To the above rapid narrative of the poet, we 
may annex a few details, gathered from his vari- 
ous biographers and from his own letters. 

While his sheets were in the press, it appee.Tgj 
that his friends, Hamilton and Aiken, resolved va- 
rious schemes for procuring him the moans of re- 
maining in Scotland ; and having studied some of 
the practical branches of mathematics, as we have 
seen, and in particular^aw^iw^, it occurred to him- 

* Gilbert Burus mentions, that a single individual, Mr. 
William Parker, merchant in Kilmarnock, subscribed for 35 
copies. 



100 LIFE OF 

self that a situation in the excise might be better 
suited to him than any other he was at all likely 
to obtain by the intervention of such patrons as 
he possessed. 

He appears to have lingered longer after the 
publication of the poems than one might suppose 
from his own narrative, in the hope that these 
gentlemen might at length succeed in their efforts 
in his behalf. The poems were received with fa- 
vor, even with rapture, in the county of Ayr, and 
ere long over the adjoining counties. " Old and 
young,'^thus speaks Robert Heron, "high and 
low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, were alike 
delighted, agitated, transported. I was at that time 
resident in Galloway, contiguous to Ayrshire, and 
I can well remember how even ploughboys and 
maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the 
wages they earned the most hardly, and which they 
wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they 
might but procure the Works of Burns." — The 
poet soon found that his person also had become 
an object of general curiosity, and that a lively in- 
terest in his personal fortunes was excited among 
some of the gentry of the district, when the de- 
tails of his story reached them, as it was pretty 
sure to do, along with his modest and manly pre- 
face.* Among others, the celebrated Professor 

* Preface to the F\rst Edition. 
" Tlie following- trifles are not the production of the poet, 
who, with ail the advantag-es of learned art, and, perhaps, 
amid the eleg-ancies and idleness of upper life, looks down 
for a rural theme, with an eye to I'heocritus or Virg-il. 
To the author of this, these and other celebrated names 
their countrymen are, at least in their original language, a 
fountain shut i/p, and a hook scaled. Unacquainted with 



ROBERT BURNS. 101 

Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh, and his accom- 
plished lady, then resident at their beautiful seat 

the necessary requisites for commencing' poet by rule, he 
sing's the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in him- 
self and rustic compeers around him, in his and their native 
lang'uage. Thoug'h a rhymer from his earliest years, at least 
from the earliest Impulse of the softer passions, it was not till 
very lately that the applause, perhaps the partiality, of friend- 
ship, wakened his vanity so far as to make him think any- 
thing- of his worth showing" ; and none of the following- works 
were composed with a view to the press. To amuse himself 
with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and 
fatig-ues of a laborious life ; to transcribe the various feel- 
ings, the loves, the g-riefs, the hopes, the fears, in his own 
breast ; to find some kind of counterpoise to the strug-g-les 
of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the po- 
etical mind — these were his motives for courting- the Muses, 
and in these he found poetry to be its own reward. 

" Now that he appears in the public characterof an author, 
he docs it with fear and trembling-. So dear is fame to the 
rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless bard, 
shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as — an im- 
pertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world ; 
and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel 
Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of 
no small consequence, forsooth ! 

"It is an observation of that celebrated poet, Shenstone, 
whose divine elegies do honor to our language, our nation, 
and our species, that 'Humility has depressed many a genius 
to a hermit, but never raised one to fame !' If any critic 
catches at the word genius, the author tells him once for all, 
that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of some po- 
etic abilities, otherwise his publishing in' the manner he has 
done, would be a manoeuvre below the worst character, 
which, he hopes, his worst enemy will ever give him. But 
to the genius of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the 
poor, unfortunate Ferguson, he, with equal unaffected sin- 
cerity, declares, that, even in his highest pulse of vanity, he 
has not the most distant pretensions. These two justly ad- 
mired Scotch poets he has often had in his eye in the follow- 
ing pieces ; but rather with a view to kindle at their flame, 
than for servile imitation. 
To his pubscribers, the author returns his most sincere 



102 LIFE OF 

ofCatrine, beganto notice him with much polite 
and friendly attention. Dr. Hugh Blair, who then 
held an eminent place in the literary society of 
Scotland, happened to be paying Mr. Stewart a 
visit, and, on reading the Holy Fair, at once pro- 
nounced it the "work of a very great genius ;" and 
Mrs. Stewart, herself a poetess, flattered him per- 
haps still more highly by her warm commenda- 
tions. But, above all, his little volume happened 
to attract the notice of Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop, 
a lady of high birth and ample fortune, enthusi- 
astically attached to her country, and interested 
in whatever appeared to concern the honor of 
Scotland. This excellent woman, while slowly 
recovering from the languor of an illness, laid her 
hands accidentally on the new production of the 
provincial press, and opened the volume at the 
Cottar^s Saturday Night. " She read it over," 
says Gilbert, " with the greatest pleasure and sur- 
prise ; the poet's description of the simple cottagers 
operated on her mind like the charm of a power- 
ful exorcist, repelling the demon ennui, and re- 
storing her to her wonted inward harmony and sa- 
tisfaction." Mrs. Dunlop instantly sent an express 
to Mosgiel, distant sixteen miles from her resi- 

thanks. Not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the 
heart-throbbing- gratitude of the bard, conscious how much 
he owes to benevolence and friendship for gratifying" him, if 
he deserves it, in that dearest wish of every poetic bosom — 
to be disting-uished. He begs his readers, particularly the 
learned and the polite, who may honor him with a perusal, 
that they will maKe every allowance for education and cir- 
cumstances of life ; but if, after a fair, candid, and impartial 
criticism, he shall stand convicted of dullness and nonsense, 
let him be done by as he would in that case do by others — let 
him be condemned, without mercy, to contempt and obli- 
vion." 



ROBERT BURNS. lOS 

dence, with a very kind letter to Burns, request- 
ing him to supply her, if he could, with half a 
dozen copies of the book, and to call at Dunlop 
as soon as he could find it convenient. Burns 
was from home, but he acknowledged the favor 
bestowed on him in an interesting letter, still ex- 
tant ; and shortly afterwards commenced a per- 
sonal acquaintance with one that never afterwards 
ceased to befriend him to the utmost of her power. 
His letters to Mrs. Dunlop form a very large pro- 
portion of all his subsequent correspondence, and, 
addressed as they were to a person, whose sex, 
age, rank, and benevolence, inspired at once pro- 
found respect and a graceful confidence, will 
ever remain the most pleasing of all the materi- 
als of '^•l^r poet's biography. 

At the residences of these new acquaintances, 
Burns was introduced into society of a class which 
he had not before approached ; and of the man- 
ner in which he stood the trial, Mr. Stewart thus 
Writes to Dr. Currie : 

" His manners were then, as they continued 
ever afterwards, simple, manly, and independent ; 
strongly expressive of conscious genius and worth; 
but without any thing that indicated forwardness, 
arrogance, or vanity. He took his share in con- 
versation, but not more than belonged to him ; and 
listened, with apparent attention and deference, on 
subjects where his want of education deprived him 
of the means of information. If there had been a 
little more of gentleness and accommodation in his 
temper, he would, I think, have been still more 
interesting ; but he had been accustomed to give 
law in the circle of his ordinary acquaintance ; and 
his dread of any thing approaching to meanness or 
servility, rendered his manner somewhat decided 
9 



104 LIFE OF 

and hard. Notliing, perhaps, was more remarka- 
ble among his various attainments than the flu- 
ency, and precision, and originality of his lan- 
guage, when he spoke in company, more particu- 
larly as he aimed at purity in his turn of expres- 
sion, and avoided, more successfully than most 
Scotchmen, the peculiarities of Scottish phraseo- 
logy. At this time. Burns' prospects in life were 
so extremely gloomy, that he had seriously formed 
a plan of going out to Jamaica in a very humble si- 
tuation, not, however, without lamenting that his 
want of patronage should force him to think of a 
project so repugnant to his feelings, when his am- 
bition aimed at no higher an object than the station 
of an exciseman or ganger in his own country." 

The provincial applause of his publicai^'on, and 
the consequent notice of his superiors, however flat- 
tering such things must have been, were far from 
administering any essential relief to the urgent ne- 
cessities of Burns' situation. Very shortly after 
his first visit to Catrine, where he met with the 
young and amiable Basil Lprd Daer, whose con- 
descension and kindness on the occasion he cele- 
brates in some well-known verses, we find the poet 
v/riting to his friend, Mr. Aiken of Ayr, in the fol- 
lowing sad strain : " I have been feeling all the 
various rotations and movements within respecting 
the excise. There are many things plead strongly 
against it ; the uncertainty of getting soon int© bu- 
siness, the consequences of my folhes, which may 
perhaps make it impracticable for me to stay at 
home ; and besides, I have for some time been 
pining under secret wretchedness, from causes 
which you pretty well know — the pang of disap- 
pointment, the Sling of pride, with some wandering 
stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my 



ROBERT BURNS. 105 

vitals, like vultures, when attention is not called 
away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the 
muse. Even inthe hour of social mirth, my gayety 
is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under 
the hands of the executioner. All these reasons 
urge me to go abroad ; and to all these reasons I 
have only one answer — the feelings of a father. 
This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances 
tjvery thing that can be laid in the scale against it." 
He proceeds to say, that he claims no right to 
complain. " The world has in general been kind 
to me, fully up to my deserts. I was for some 
time past fast getting into the pining, distrustful 
snarl of the misanthrope. I saw myself alone, 
unfit for the struggle of life, shrinking at every 
rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of 
fortune, while, all defenseless, I looked about in 
vain for a cover. It never occurred to me, at 
least never with the force it deserved, that this 
world is a busy scene, and man a creature destined 
for a progressive struggle ; and that, however I 
might possess a warm heart, and inoffensive man- 
ners, (which last, by the by, was rather more than 
I could well boast,) still, more than these passive 
qualities, there was something to be done. When 
all my school-fellows and youthful compeers were 
striking off, with eager hope and earnest intent, 
on some one or other of the many paths of busy 
life, I was * standing idle in the market-place,' or 
only left the chase of the butterfly from flower to 
flower, to hunt fancy from whim to whim. You 
see, sir, that if to know one's errors were a pro- 
bability of mending them, I stand a fair chance ; 
but, according to the reverend Westminster 
divines, though conviction must precede conver- 
tsion, it is very far from always implying it." 



106 LIFE OF 

In the midst of all the distresses of this period 
of suspense, Burns found time, as he tells Mr, 
Aiken, for some "vagaries of the muse;" and 
one or two of these may deserve to be noticed 
here, as throwing light on his personal demeanor 
during this first summer of his fame. The poems 
appeared in July, and one of the first persons of 
superior condition, (Gilbert, indeed, says the first,) 
who courted his acquaintance in consequence of 
having read them, was Mrs. Stewart of Stair, a 
beautiful and accomplished lady. Burns pre, 
sented her on this occasion with some MSS. 
songs ; and among the rest, with one in which 
her own charms were celebrated in that warm 
strain of compliment which our poet seems to 
have all along considered the most proper to be used 
whenever fair lady was to be addressed in rhyme. 

" Plow gently, sweet Afton, amon^ thy green braes, 
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise : 
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, 
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow; 
There oft, as mild evening sweeps over the lea. 
The sweet-scented biik sliades my Mary and me." 

It was in the spring of the same year, that he 
had happened, in the course of an evening ram- 
ble on the banks of the Ayr, to meet with a 
young and lovely unmarried lady, of the family of 
Alexander of Ballamyle ; and now, (Sept. 1786,) 
emboldened, we are to suppose, by the reception 
his volume had met with, he inclosed to her some? 
verses, which he had written in commemoration 
of that passing glimpse of her beauty, and con- 
ceived in a strain of luxurious fervor, which cer- 
tainly, coming from a man of Burns' station and 



ROBERT BURNS. 107 

character, must have sounded very strangely in a 
dehcate maiden's ear. 

" Oh, had she been a country maid. 

And I the happy country swain, 
Though shelter'd in the lowest shed, 

That ever rose on Scotia's plain ! 
Throug-h weary winter's wind and rain. 

With joy, with rapture, I would toil, 
And nig-htly to my bosom strain 

The bonny lass of Ballochmyle." 

Burns is said by Allan Cunningham to have re- 
sented bitterly the silence in which Miss Alexan- 
der received this tribute to her charms. I sup- 
pose we may account for his over tenderness to 
young ladies in pretty much the same way that 
Professor Dugald Stewart does, in the letter 
above quoted, for " a certain want of gentleness" 
in his method of addressing persons of his own sex. 
His rustic experience among the fair could have 
had no tendency to whisper the lesson of reserve. 

The autumn of this eventful year v/as now draw- 
ing to a close, and Burns, who had already linger- 
ed three months in the hope, which he now con- 
sidered vain, of an excise appointment, perceived 
that another year must be lost altogether, unless 
he made up his mind, and secured his passage to 
the West Indies. The Kilmarnock edition of his 
poems was, however, nearly exhausted ; and his 
friends encouraged him to produce another at the 
same place, with the view of equipping himself the 
better for the necessities of his voyage. But the 
printer at Kilmarnock would not undertake the 
new impression unless Burns advanced the price 
of the paper required for it ; and with this demand 
the poet had no means of complying. Mr. Bal- 
lantyne, the chief magistrate of Ayr, (the same 



108 LIFE OF 

gentleman to whom the poem on the Twa Brigs 
of Ayr was afterwards inscribed,) offered to fur- 
nish the money ; and probably this kind offer would 
have been accepted. But, ere this matter could 
be arranged, the prospects of the poet were, in a 
very unexpected manner, altered and improved. 
Burns went to pay a parting visit to Dr. Laurie, 
minister of Loudoun, a gentleman from whom, 
and his accomplished family, he had previously 
received many kind attentions. After taking 
farewell of this benevolent circle, the poet pro- 
ceeded, as night was setting in, " to convey his 
chest," as he says, " so far on the road to Green- 
ock, where he was to embark in a few days for 
America." And it was under these circum. 
stances that he composed the song already refer- 
red to, which he meant as his farewell dirge to his 
native land, and which ends thus : 

" Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales, 
Her heathy moors and winding- vales, ' 
The scenes where wretched fancy roves, 
Pursuing- past unhappy loves. 
Farewell, my friends ! farewell, my foes ! 
My peace with these — my love with those — 
The bursting- tears my lieart declare, 
Farewell, the bonny banks of Ayr." 

Dr. Laurie had given Burns much good counsel, 
and what comfort he could, at parting ; but pru- 
pently said nothing of an effort which he had pre- 
viously made in his behalf. He had sent a copy 
of the poems, with a sketch of the author's history, 
to his friend, Dr. Thomas Blacklock, of Edin- 
burgh, with a request that he would introduce both 
to the notice of those persons whose opinions were 
at the time most listened to in regard to literary 
productions in Scotland, in the hope that, by their 



ROBERT BURNS. 109 

intervention. Burns might yet be rescued from the 
necessity of expatriating himself. Dr. Black- 
lock's answer reached Dr. Laurie a day or two 
after Burns had made his visit, and composed his 
dirge ; and it was not yet too late. Laurie for- 
warded it immediately to Mr. Gavin Hamilton, 
who carried it to Burns. It is as follows : 

" I ought to have acknowledged your favor long 
ago, not only as a testimony of your kind remem- 
brance, but as it gave me an opportunity of sharing 
one of the finest, and perhaps one of the most ge- 
nuine entertainments of which the human mind is 
susceptible. A number of avocations retarded my 
progress in reading the poems ; at last, however, I 
have finished that pleasing perusal. Many in- 
stances have I seen of Nature's force or benefi- 
cence exerted under numerous and formidable 
disadvantages ; but none equal to that with which 
you have been kind enough to present me. There 
is a pathos and delicacy in his serious poems, a 
vein of wit and humor in those of a more fes- 
tive turn, which cannot be too much admired, nor 
too warmly approved ; and I think I shall never 
open the book without feeling my astonishment 
renewed and increased. It was my wish to have 
expressed my approbation in verse ; but whether 
from declining life, or a temporary depression of 
spirits, it is at present out of my power to ac- 
complish that agreeable intention. 

*' Mr. Stewart, Professor of Morals in this Uni- 
versity, had formerly read me three of the poems, 
and I had desired him to get my name inserted 
among the subscribers ; but whether this was 
done, or not, I never could learn. I have little 
intercourse with Dr. Blair, but will take care to 
have the poems communicated to him by the in- 



110 LIFE OF 

tervention of some mutual friend. It has been 
told me by a gentleman, to whom I showed the 
performances, and who sought a copy with dili- 
gence and ardor, that the whole impression is 
already exhausted. It were, therefore, much to 
be wished, for the sake of the young man, that a 
second edition, more numerous than the former, 
could immediately be printed : as it appears cer- 
tain that its intrinsic merit, and the exertion of 
the author's friends, might give it a more univer- 
sal circulation than any thing of the kind which 
has been published in my memory."* 

We have already seen with what surprise and 
delight Burns read this generous letter. Although 
he had ere this conversed with more than one per- 
son of established literary reputation, and received 
from them attentions, for which he was ever after 
grateful, — the despondency of his spirit appears 
to have remained as dark as ever, up to the very 
hour when his landlord produced Dr. Blacklock's 
letter ; and one may be pardoned for fancying, 
that in his Vision, he has himself furnished no un- 
faithful representation of the manner in which he 
was spending what he looked on as one of the 
last nights, if not the very last, he was to pass at 
Mossgiel, when the friendly Hamilton unexpect- 
edly entered the melancholy dwelling. 

" There, lanely by the ing-le-cheek 
I sat and eyed the spewing- reek, 
That fiU'd, wi' hoast-provoking- reek, 

The auld clay-bigg-in', 
And heard the restless rattans squeak 

About the rig-gin'. 

* Rcliques, p. 279. 



ROPERT BURNS. Ill 

All in this inottie mistie clime, ^ 
I backward mused on wasted time, 
How I had spent my youthfu' prime, 

An' done nae thing", 
But stringin' blethers up in rhyme 

For fools to sing-. 

Had T to gude advice but harkit, 
I might by this hae led a market. 
Or strutted in a bank an' clarkit 

My cash-account. 
While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarkit, 

Is a' the amount." 

"Doctor Blacklock," says Burns, "belonged 
to a set of critics, for whose applause I had not 
dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet 
with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so 
much, that away I posted for that city, without a 
single acquaintance, or a single letter of mtroduc- 
tion. The baneful star that had so long shed its 
blasting influence in my zenith, for once made a 
revolution to the nadir."* 

Two of the biographers of Burns have had the 
advantage of speaking from personal knowledge of 
this excellent man, whose interposition was thus 
serviceable. " It was a fortunate circumstance," 
says Walker, " that the person whom Dr. Laurie 
appUed to, merely because he was the only one 
of his literary acquaintances with whom he chose 
to use that freedom, happened also to be the per- 
son best qualified to render the application success- 
ful. Dr. Blacklock was an enthusiast in his ad- 
miration of an art which he had practiced himself 
with applause. He felt the claims of a poet with 
a paternal sympathy, and he had in his constitu- 



Lctter to Moore. 



112 LIFE Of 

tion a tenderness and sensibility that Would have 
engaged his beneficence for a youth in the cir- 
cumstances of Burns, even though he had not 
been indebted to him for the delight which he 
received from his works ; for if the young men 
were enumerated whom he drew from obscurity, 
and enabled by education to advance themselves 
in life, the catalogue would naturally excite sur- 
prise. . . . He was not of a disposition to act as 
Walpole did to Chatterton ; to discourage with 
feeble praise, and to shift off the trouble of future 
patronage, by bidding him relinquish poetry, and 
mind his plough."* 

" There was never, perhaps," thus speaks the 
unfortunate Heron, whose own unmerited sorrows 
and sufferings would not have left so dark a stain on 
the literary history of Scotland, had the kind spirit 
of Blacklock been common among his lettered 
countrymen — " There was never, perhaps, one 
among all mankind whom you might more truly 
have called an angel upon earth than Dr. Black- 
lock. He was guileless and innocent as a child, 
yet endowed with manly sagacity and penetra- 
tion. His heart was a perpetual spring of benig- 
nity. His feehngs were all trembhngly alive to 
the sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the ten- 
der, the pious, the virtuous. Poetry was to him 
the dear solace of perpetual blindness." 

Such was the amiable old man, whose life Mac- 
kenzie has written, and on whom Johnson " look- 
ed with reverence."! The writings of Blacklock 

+ Morrison, vol. i. p. 9. 

t "This morning- I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock the 
blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and 
is read to by a poor scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. 



ROBERT BURNS. 113 

are forgotten, (though some of his songs in the 
Museum deserve another fate,) but the memory 
of his virtues will not pass away until mankind 
shall have ceased to sympathize with the fortunes 
of Genius, and to appreciate the poetry of Burns. 

He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked on with 
reverence." Letter to Mrs. Thrale. Edinburgh, Augrust 
17, 1773. 



114 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER V. 

"Edina! Scotia's darling- seat ! 

All hail thy palaces and tow'rs, 
Where once beneath a monarch's feet 

Sat legislation's sovereig-n powers; 
From marking- wildly-scatter'd flowr'3, 

As on the banks of Ayr I strayed, 
And sing-ing-, lone, the ling-ering- hours, 

I shelter in thy honor' d shade." 

There is an old Scottish ballad which begins 
thus; 

" As I came in by Glenap, 

I met an ag-ed woman, 
And she bade me cheer up my heart, 

For the best of my days was coming-." 

This stanza was one of Burns' favorite quota- 
tions ; and he told a friend* many years after- 
wards, that he remembered humming it to him- 
self, over and over, on his way from Mossgiel to 
Edinburgh. Perhaps the excellent Blacklock 
might not have been particularly flattered with the 
circumstance had it reached his ears. 

Although he repaired to the capital with such 
alertness, solely in consequence of Blacklock's 
letter to Dr. Laurie, it appears that he allowed 
some weeks to pass ere he presented himself to 
the doctor's personal notice. f He found several 

* David MaccuUoch, Esq., brother to Ardwell. 

t Burns reached Edinburg-h before the end of Novem- 
ber, and yet Dr. Laurie's letter, (General Correspondence, 
p. 37,) admonishing- him to wait on Blacklock, is dated De- 
cember 22. 



ROBERT BURNS. 115 

of his old Ayrshire acquaintances established in 
Edinburgh, and, I suppose, felt himself constrain- 
ed to give himself up for a brief space to their so- 
ciety. He printed, however, without delay, a 
prospectus of a second edition of his poems, and 
being introduced by Mr. Dalrymple of Orange- 
field to the Earl of Glencairn, that amiable no- 
bleman easily persuaded Creech, then the chief 
bookseller in Edinburgh, (who had attended his 
son as traveling-tutor,) to undertake the pubHca- 
tion. The Honorable Henry Erskine, Dean of the 
Faculty of Advocates, the most agreeable of com- 
panions, and the most benignant of wits, took him 
also, as the poet expresses it, " under his wing." 
The kind Blacklock received him with all the 
warmth of paternal affection when he did wait on 
him, and introduced him to Dr. Blair, and other 
eminent literati ; his subscription lists were soon 
filled ; Lord Glencairn made interest with the Ca- 
ledonian Hunt, (an association of the most distin- 
guished members of the northern aristocracy,) to 
accept the dedication of the forthcoming edition, 
and to subscribe individually for copies. Several 
noblemen, especially of the west of Scotland, came 
forward with subscription-moneys considerably be- 
yond the usual rate. In so small a capital, where 
every body knows every body, that which becomes 
a favorite topic in one leading circle of society, 
soon excites a universal interest ; and before 
Burns had been a fortnight in Edinburgh, we find 
him writing to his earliest patron, Gavin Hamilton, 
in these terms : " For my own affairs, I am in 
a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas 
a Kempis or John Bunyan ; and you may expect 
henceforth to see my birthday inscribed among 
the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aber- 
10 



116 LIFE OF 

deen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday, 
and the Battle of Bolhwell Bridge." 

It will ever be remembered, to the honor of 
the man who at that period held the highest place 
in the imaginative literature of Scotland, that he 
was the first who came forward to avow in print 
his admiration of the genius and his v/arm inte- 
rest in the fortunes of the poet. Distinguished as 
his own writings are by the refinements of clas- 
sical art, Mr. Henry Mackenzie was, fortunately 
for Burns, a man of liberal genius, as well as po- 
lished taste ; and he, in whose own pages some 
of the best models of elaborate eleg-ance will ever 
be recognized, was among the first to feel, and the 
first to stake his own reputation on the public 
avowal, that the Ayrshire Ploughman belonged to 
the order of beings, whose privilege it is to snatch 
graces " beyond the reach of art." It is but a 
melancholy business to trace among the records 
of literary history, the manner in which most 
great original geniuses have been greeted on their 
first appeals to the world, by the contemporary ar- 
biters of taste ; coldly and timidly indeed have the 
sympathies of professional criticism flowed on 
most such occasions in past times and in the pre- 
sent : But the reception of Burns was worthy of 
the Man of Feeling, After alluding to the pro- 
vincial circulation and reputation of his poems,* 
*' I hope," said The Lounger, " I shall not be 
thought to assume too much, if I endeavor to 
place him in a higher point of view, to call for a 
verdict of his country on the merits of his works, 
and to claim for him those honors which their ex- 
cellence appears to deserve. In mentioning the 

♦ The Lounger for Saturday, December 9, 1786. 



ROBERT BURNS. 117 

circumstance of his humble station, I mean not 
to rest his pretensions solely on that title, or to 
urge the merits of his poetry, when considered in 
relation to the lowness of his birth, and the little 
opportunity of improvement which his education 
could afford. These particulars, indeed, must 
excite our v/onder at his productions ; but his po- 
etry, considered abstractedly, and without the 
apologies arising from his situation, seems to me 
fully entitled to command our feelings, and to ob- 
tain our applause." After quoting va- 
rious passages, in some of which his readers 
" must discover a high tone of feeling, and pow- 
er, and energy of expression, particularly and 
strongly characteristic of the mind and the voice 
of a poet," and others as shov/ing *' the power of 
genius, not less admirable in tracing the manners 
than in painting the passions, or in drawing the 
scenery of nature," and " with what uncommon 
penetration and sagacity this heaven-taught 
ploughman, from his humble and unlettered con- 
dition, had looked on men and manners," the cri- 
tic concluded with an eloquent appeal in behalf of 
the poet personally : " To repair," said he, " the 
wrong of suffering or neglected merit ; to call 
forth genius from the obscurity in which it had 
pined indignant, and place it where it may profit 
or delight the world — these are exertions which 
give to wealth an enviable superiority, to great- 
ness and to patronage a laudable pride." 

We all know how the serious part of this ap- 
peal was ultimately attended to ; but, in the mean 
time, whatever gratification such a mind as his 
could derive from the blandishments of the fair, 
the condescension of the noble, and the flatteries 



118 LIFE OF 

of the learned, were plentifully administered to 
" the Lion" of the season. 

" I was, sir," thus wrote Burns to one of his 
Ayrshire patrons,* a few days after the Lounger 
appeared, — "I was, when first honored with 
your notice, too obscure ; now I tremble lest I 
should be ruined by being dragged too suddenly 
into the glare of polite and learned observation ;" 
and he concludes the same letter with an omi- 
nous prayer for" better health and more spirits." 

Two or three weeks later we find him writing 
as follows : "(January 14, 1787.) I went to a 
Mason Lodge yesternight, where the M. W. 
Grand Master Charteris and all the Grand Lodge 
of Scotland visited. The meeting was numerous 
and elegant : all the different Lodges about town 
were present in all their pomp. The Grand Mas- 
ter, who presided with great solemnity, among 
other general toasts gave ' Caledonia and Caledo- 
nia's bard, Brother B ,' which rung through 

the whole lissembly with multiplied honors and r<3- 
peated acclamations. As I had no idea such a 
thing would happen, I was downright thunder- 
struck : and trembling in every nerve, made the 
best return in my power. Just as I had finished, 
one of the Grand Officers said, so loud that I 
could hear, with a most comforting accent, ' very 
well, indeed,' which set me something to rights 
again." 

And a few weeks later still, he is thus address- 
ed by one of his old associates who was meditat- 
ing a visit to Edinburgh : " By all accounts, it 
will be a difficult matter to get a sight of you at 
all, unless your company is bespoke a week before- 

* Letter to Mr. Ballantyne of Ayr, December 13, 1786, Re- 
iiquesj p. 12. 



ROBERT BURNS. 119 

hand. There are great rumors here of your inti- 
macy with the Duchess of Gordon, and other la- 
dies of distinction. I am really told that 

' Cards to invite, fly by thousands each night ;' 

and if you had one, there would, also, I suppose, 
be ' bril3es for your old secretary,' I observe you 
are resolved to make hay while the sun shines, 
and avoid, if possible, the fate of poor Ferguson, 
QucETcnda pecim'ia iirimum est — Virtus jjost num- 
mos, is a good maxim to thrive by. You seemed 
to despise it while in this country ; but, probably, 
some philosophers in Edinburgh have taught 5^ou 
better sense." 

In this proud career, however, the popular idol 
needed no slave to whisper whence he had risen, 
and whither he was to return in the ebb of the 
spring-tide of fortune. His " prophetic soul" was 
probably furnished with a sufficient memento eve- 
ry night — when, from the soft homage of glitter- 
ing saloons, or the tumultuous applause of con- 
vivial assemblies, he made his retreat to the hum- 
ble garret of a writer^s apprentice, a native of 
Mauchline, and as poor as himself, whose only 
bed " Caledonia's Bard" was fain to partake 
throughout this triumphant winter.* 

He bore all his honors in », manner worthy of 
himself; and of this the testimonies are so nume- 



" Old Mr. Richmond, of Mauchline, told me that Burns 
spent the first winter of his residence in Edinburg-h, in his 
lodg-ing-s. They slept in the same bed, and had only one 
room, "it was in the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's Close, 
Lawnmarket, first scale-stair on the left hand in g^oing" down, 
first door in the stair." I quote from a letter of Mr. R". Cham- 
bers, the dilg-ent local antiqviary of Edinburgh, to whom I 
owe many obligations. 

10^ 



120 LIFE OF 

rous, that the only difficulty is that of selection. 
" The attentions he received," says Mr. Dugald 
Stewart, " from all ranks and descriptions of per- 
sons, were such as would have turned any head 
but his own. I cannot say that I could perceive 
any unfavorable effect which they left on his 
mind. He retained the same simplicity of man- 
ners and appearance which had struck me so for- 
cibly when I first saw him in the country ; nor did 
he seem to feel any additional self-importance from 
the number and rank of his new acquaintance." 

Professor Walker, who met him, for the first 
time, early in the same season, at breakfast in Dr. 
Blacklock's house, has thus recorded his impres- 
sions : " I was not much struck with his first 
appearance, as I had previously heard it de- 
scribed. His person, though strong and well knit, 
and much superior to what might be expected in 
a ploughman, was still rather coarse in its outline. 
His stature, from want of setting up, appeared to 
be only of the middle size, but was rather above 
it. His motions were firm and decided, and 
though without any pretensions to grace, were at 
the same time so free from clownish constraint, as 
to show that he had not always been confined to 
the society of his profession. His countenance 
was not of that elegant cast, which is most fre- 
quent among the upper ranks, but it was manly 
and intelHgent, and marked by a thoughtful gra- 
vity which shaded at times into sternness. In his 
large dark eye the most striking index of his genius 
resided. It was full of mind j and would have 
been singukirly expressive, under the manage- 
ment of one who could employ it with more 
art, for the purpose of expression, 
" He was plainly, but properly dressed, in a style 



ROBERT BURNS. 121 

mid-way between the holiday costume of a farmer, 
and that of the company with which he now asso- 
ciated. His black hair, without powder, at a 
time when it was very generally worn, was tied 
behind, and spread upon his forehead. Upon the 
whole, from his person, physiognomy, and dress, 
had I met him near a seaport, and been required to 
guess his condition, I should have probably con- 
jectured him to be the master of a merchant ves- 
sel of the most respectable class. 

" In no part of his manner was there the slight- 
est degree of afTectation, nor could a stranger 
have suspected, from any thing in his behavior 
or conversation, that he had been for some months 
the favorite of all the fashionable circles of a me- 
tropolis. 

" In conversation he was powerful. His con- 
ceptions and expressions were of corresponding 
vigor, and on all subjects were as remote as possi- 
ble from commonplaces. Though somewhat autho- 
ritative, it was in a way which gave little offense, 
and was readily imputed to his inexperience in 
those modes of smoothing dissent and softening 
assertion, which are important characteristics of 
polished manners. After breakfast I requested 
him to communicate some of his unpublished 
pieces, and he recited his farewell song to the 
Banks of Ayr, introducing it with a description of 
the circumstances in w^hich it was composed, 
more striking than the poem itself. 

" I paid particular attention to his recitation, 
which was plain, slow, articulate, and forcible, but 
without any eloquence or art. He did not always 
lay the emphhasis with propriety, nor did he hu- 
mor the sentiment by the variations of his voice. 
He was standing, during the time, with his face 



122 LIFE OF 

towards the window, to which, and not to his au- 
ditors, he directed his eye — thus depriving him- 
self of any additional effect which the language of 
his composition might have borrowed from the 
language of his countenance. In this, he resem- 
bled the generality of singers in ordinary compa- 
ny, who, to shun any charge of affectation, with- 
draw all meaning from their features, and lose the 
advantage by which vocal performers on the stage 
augment the impression, and give energy to the 
sentiment of the song 

" The day after my first introduction to Burns, 
I supped in company with him at Dr. Blair's. The 
other guests were very few, and as each had been 
invited chiefly to have an opportunity of meeting 
with the poet, the Doctor endeavored to draw 
him out, and to make him the central figure of the 
group. Though he therefore furnished the greatest 
proportion of the conversation, he did no more 
than what he saw evidently was expected."* 

To these reminiscences I shall now add those 
of one who is not likely to be heard unwillingly 
on any subject ; and — young as he was in 178(5 — 
on few subjects, I think, with greater interest than 
the personal appearance and conversation of Ro- 
bert Burns. The following is an extract from a 
letter of Sir Walter Scott : 

" As for Burns, I may truly say, Virgilium vidi 
tanium. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when 
he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and 
feeling enough to be much interested in his 
poetry, and would have given the world to 
know him : but I had very little acquaintance with 
any literary people, and still less with the gentry 

Morrison's Burns, vol. i. pp. Ixxi. Ixxii. 



KOBERT BURNS. 123 

of the west country, the two sets that he most 
frequented, Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that 
time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, 
and promised to ask him to his lodgings to din- 
ner, but had no opportunity to keep his word ; 
otherwise I might have seen more of this distin- 
guished man. As it was, I saw him one day at 
the late venerable Professor Fergusson's where 
there were several gentlemen of literary reputa- 
tion, among whom I remember the celebrated 
Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course we j^oungsters 
sate silent, looked, and listened. The only thing 
I remember which was remarkable in Burns' 
manner, was the effect produced upon him by a 
print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying 
dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on 
one side, — on the other, his widow, with a child in 
her arms. These lines were written beneath, — 

' Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain. 
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain— 
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big- drops, ming-ling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad presag^e of his future years, 
'I'he child of misery baptized in tears.' 

" Burns seemed much affected by the print, or 
rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. 
He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines 
were, and it chanced that nobody but myself re- 
membered that they occurin a half-forgotten poem 
of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of 
The Justice of Peace. I whispered my informa- 
tion to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, 
who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, 
though of mere civility, I then received, and still 
recollect, with very great pleasure. 

" His person was strong and robust ; his man- 



124 LIFE OF 

ners rustic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plain* 
ness and simplicity, which received part of its ef- 
fect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraor- 
dinary talents. His features are represented in 
Mr. Nasmith's picture, but to me it conveys the 
idea, that they are diminished as if seen in perspec- 
tive. I think his countenance was more massive 
than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have 
taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for 
a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch 
school, i. e. none of your modern agriculturalists, 
who keep laborers for their drudgery, but the 
douce gudeman who held his own plough. There 
was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness 
in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indi- 
cated the poetical character and temperament. It 
was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say 
literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or 
interest. I never saw such another eye in a hu- 
man head, though I have seen the most distin- 
guished men of my time. His conversation ex- 
pressed perfect self-confidence, without the slight- 
est presumption. Among the men who were the 
most learned of their time and country, he express- 
ed himself with perfect firmness, but v/ithout the 
least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed 
in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, 
yet at the same time with modesty. I do not re- 
member any part of his conversation distinctly 
enough to be quoted, nor did I ever see him again, 
except in the street, where he did not recognize 
me, as I could not expect he should. He was much 
caressed in Edinburgh, but (considering what lite- 
rary emoluments have been since his day) the ef- 
forts made for his relief were extremely trifling. 
" I remember on this occasion I mention, I 



ROBERT BURNS. 



125 



thought Burns' acquaintance with English poetry- 
was rather hmited, and also, that having twenty 
times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fer- 
guson, he talked of them with too much humility 
as his models ; there was, doubtless, national pre- 
dilection in his estimate. 

" This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have 
only to add that his dress corresponded with his 
manner. He was like a farmer dressed in his 
best to dine with the Laird, I do not speak in ma- 
lam iJariem, when I say, I never saw a man in 
company with his superiors in station and informa- 
tion, more perfectly free from either the reality 
or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, 
but did not observe it, that his address to females 
was extremely deferential, and always with a turn 
either to the pathetic or humorous, which en- 
gaged their attention particularly. I have heard 
the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. I do 
not know any thing I can add to these recollec- 
tions of forty years since." 

Darkly as the career of Burns was destined to 
terminate, there can be no doubt that he made his 
first appearance at a period highly favorable for 
his reception as a British, and especially as a Scot- 
tish poet. Nearly forty years had elapsed since the 
death of Thomson : — Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, 
had successively disappeared : — Dr. Johnson had 
belied the rich promise of his^early appearance, and 
confined himself to prose ; and Cowper had hardly 
begun to be recognized as having any considera- 
ble pretensions to fill the long-vacant throne in 
England. At home — without derogation from the 
merits either o^ Douglas ^ or the Minstrel, be it said 
— men must have gone back at least three centu- 
ries to find a Scottish poet at all entitled to be 



126 LIFE OF 

considered as of that high order to which the ge- 
nerous criticism of Mackenzie at once admitted 
" the Ayrshire Ploughman." Of the form and 
garb of his composition, much, unquestionably 
and avowedly, was derived from his more imme- 
diate predecessors, Ramsay and Ferguson : but 
there was a bold mastery of hand in his pictu- 
resque descriptions, to produce any thing equal to 
which it was necessary to recall the days of 
ChrisCs Kirk on the Green, and Peebles to the Play : 
and in his more solemn pieces, a depth of inspira- 
tion, and a massive energy of language, to which 
the dialect of his country had been a stranger, at 
least since " Dunbar the Mackar." The Muses 
of Scotland had never indeed been silent ; and 
the ancient minstrelsy of the land, of which a slen- 
der portion had as yet been committed to the safe- 
guard of the press, was handed from generation 
to generation, and preserved, in many a fragment, 
faithful images of the peculiar tenderness, and 
peculiar humor, of the national fancy and cha- 
racter — precious representations, which Burns 
himself never surpassed in his happiest efforts. 
But these were fragments : and with a scanty 
handful of exceptions, the best of them, at least 
of the serious kind, were very ancient. Among 
the numberless effusions of the Jacobite Muse, 
valuable as we now consider them for the record 
of manners and events, it would be difficult to 
point out half a dozen strains, worthy, for poeti- 
cal excellence alone, of a place among the old 
chivalrous ballads of the Southern, or even of the 
Highland Border, Generations had passed away 
since any Scottish poet had appealed to the sym- 
pathies of his countrymen in a lofty Scottish strain. 
The dialect itself had been hardly dealt with. 



ROBERT BURNS. 127 

'' It is my opinion," said Dr. Geddes, " that those 
who, for almost a century past, have written in 
Scotch, Allan Ramsay not excepted, have not duly 
discriminated the genuine idiom from its vulgar- 
isms. They seem to have acted a similar part to 
certain pretended imitators of Spenser and Mil- 
ton, who fondly imagine that they are copying 
from these great models, when they only mimic 
their antique mode of spelling, their obsolete 
terms, and their irregular constructions." And 
although I cannot well guess what the doctor con- 
sidered as the irregular constructions of Milton, 
there can be no doubt of the general justice of 
his observations. Ramsay and Ferguson were 
both men of humble condition, the latter of the 
meanest, the former of no very elegant habits ; 
and the dialect which had once pleased the ears 
of kings, who themselves did not disdain to dis- 
play its powers and elegancies in verse, did not 
come untarnished through their hands. Ferguson, 
who was entirely town-bred, smells more of the 
Cowgate than of the country ; and pleasing as 
Ramsay's rustics are, he appears rather to have 
observed the surface of rural manners, in casual 
excursions to Penycuik and the Hunter's Tryste, 
than to have expressed the results of intimate 
knowledge and sympathy. His dialect was a 
somewhat incongruous mixture of the Upper 
Ward of Lanark and the Luckenbooths ; and he 
could neither write English verses, nor engraft 
English phraseology on his Scotch, without be- 
traying a lamentable want of skill in the use of 
his instruments. It was reserved for Burns to in- 
terpret the inmost soul of the Scottish peasant in 
all its moods, and in verse exquisitely and in- 
tensely Scottish, without degrading either his sen- 
11 



128 LIFE Of^ 

timents or his language with one touch of vttJga^- 
rity. Such is the deUcacy of native taste, and 
the power of a truly masculine genius. 

This is the more remarkable, when we consi- 
der that the dialect of Burns' native district is, 
in all mouths but his own, a peculiarly oJETensive 
one : — far removed from that of the favoi-ed dis- 
tricts in which the ancient minstrelsy appears, 
with rare exceptions, to have been produced. 
Even in the elder days, it seems to have been 
proverbial for its coarseness. Dunbar, among 
other sarcasms on his antagonist Kennedy, says : 

"I half on me a pair of Lothiane hippg 

Sail fairer Iiiglis mak, and mairperiyte, 

Than thou can blabber v/ith thy Carrick lipps ;" 

and the Covenanters were not likely to mend it» 
The few poets* whom the west of Scotland had 
produced in the old time, were all men of high 
condition ; and who, of course, used the language, 
not of their own villages, but of Holyrood. Their 
productions, moreover, in so far as they have been 
produced, had nothing to do with the peculiar 
chracter and feelings of the men of the west. As 
Burns himself has said, — " It is somewhat singu- 
lar, that in Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, &c., there is 
scarcely an old song or tune, which, from the 
title, &c., can be guessed to belong to, or be the 
production of, those counties." 

The history of Scottish literature, from the union 
of the crowns to that of the kingdoms, has not 
yet been made the subject of any separate work 

* Such as Kennedy, Shaw, Montg-omery, and, more lately, 
Hamilton of Gilbertfield ; 

" Who bade the brakes of Airdrie long- resound 
The plaintive dirge that mourn'd his favorite hound.'' 



no CERT BURNS. 



129 



:at all worthy of its importance ; nay, however 
much we are indebted to the learned labors of 
Pinkerton, Irving, and others, enough of the^ene- 
ral obscurity of which Warren complained still 
continues, to the no small discredit of so accom- 
plished a nation. But how miserably the literature 
of the country was affected by the loss of the 
court under whose immediate patronage it had, in 
almost all preceding times, found a measure of 
protection that will ever do honor to the memory 
of the unfortunate house of Stuart, appears to be 
indicated with sufficient plainness in the single 
fact, that no man can point out any Scottish author 
of the first rank in all the long period which inter- 
vened between Buchanan and Hume. The remo- 
val of the chief nobility and gentry, consequent on 
the Legislative Union, appeared to destroy our 
last hopes as a separate nation, possessing a se- 
parate literature of our own ; nay, for a time, to 
have all but extinguished the flame of intellectual 
exertion and ambition. Long torn and harassed 
by religious and political feuds, this people had at 
last heard, as many believed, the sentence of irre- 
mediable degradation pronounced by the lips of 
their own prince and parliament. The universal 
spirit of Scotland was humbled; the unhappy insur- 
rections of 1715 and 1745 revealed the full extent 
of her internal disunion ; and England took, in 
some respects, merciless advantage of the fallen. 
Time, however, passed on ; and Scotland re- 
covering at last from the blow which had stunned 
her energies, began to vindicate her pretensions, 
in the only departments which had been left open 
to her, with a zeal and a success which will ever 
distinguish one of the brightest pages of her his. 
iory. Deprived of every national honor and dis. 



130 LIFE OF 

linction which it was possible to remove — all the 
high branches of external ambition lopped off,- — 
sunk at last, as men thought, effectually into a 
province, willing to take law with passive submis- 
sion, in letters as well as polity, from her power- 
ful sister- — the old kingdom revived suddenly from 
her stupor, and once more asserted her name in 
reclamations with England — was compelled not 
only to hear, but to applaud, and " wherewith all 
Europe rung from side to side," at the moment 
when a national poet came forward to profit by the 
reflux of a thousand half-forgotten sympathies — 
amidst the full joy of a national pride revived and 
re-established beyond the dream of hope. 

It will always reflect honor on the galaxy of 
eminent men of letters, who, in their various de- 
partments, shed lustre at that period on the name 
of Scotland, that they suffered no pedantic preju- 
dices to interfere with their reception of Burns, 
Had he not appeared personally among them, it 
may be reasonably doubted whether this would 
have been so. They were men, generally speak- 
ing, of very social habits ; living together in a 
small capital ; nay, almost all of them, in or about 
one street, maintaining friendly intercourse conti- 
nually ; not a few of them considerably addicted to 
the pleasures which have been called, by way of 
excellence, I presume, convivial. Burns' poetry 
might have procured him access to these circles ; 
but it was the extraordinary resources he display- 
ed in conversation, the strong, vigorous sagacity of 
his observations on hfe and manners, the splendor 
of his wit, and the glowing energy of his elo- 
quence when his feelings were stirred, that made 
him the object of serious admiration among these 
practiced matters of the arts of talk. There wer© 



ROBERT BUHNS. 131 

several of them who probably adopted in their 
hearts the opinion of Newton, that " poetry is in- 
genious nonsense." Adam Smith, for one, could 
have had no very ready respect at the service of 
such an unproductive laborer as a maker of Scot- 
tish ballads ; but the stateliest of these philoso- 
phers had enough to do to maintain the attitude 
of equality, when brought into personal contact 
with Burns' gigantic understanding ; and every 
one of them whose impressions on the subject 
have been recorded, agrees in pronouncing his 
■conversation to have been the most remarkable 
thing about him. 

And yet it is amusing enough to trace the lin- 
gering reluctance of some of these polished 
scholars, about admitting, even to themselves, in 
his absence, what it is certain they all felt suffi- 
ciently when they were actually in his presence. 
It is difficult, for example, to read without a smile 
that letter of Mr. Dugald Stewart, in which he 
describes himself and Mr. Alison as being sur- 
prised to discover that Burns, after reading the 
latter author's elegant Essay on Taste, had really 
been able to form some shrewd enough notion of 
the general principles of the association of ideas. 

Burns would probably have been more satisfied 
with himself in these learned societies, had he 
been less addicted to giving free utterance in con- 
versation to the very feelings which formed the 
noblest inspirations of his poetry. His sensibility 
was as tremblingly exquisite, as his sense was 
masculine and solid ; and he seems to have ere 
long suspected that the professional metaphysi- 
cians who applauded his rapturous bursts, survey, 
ed them in reality with something of the same 
feeling which may be supposed to attend a skillful 
11* 



132 LIFE OF 

surgeon's inspection of a curious specimen of 
morbid anatomy. Why should he lay his inmost 
heart thus open to dissectors, who took special 
care to keep the knife from their own breasts ? 
The secret blush that overspread his haughty 
countenance when such suggestions occurred to 
him in his solitary hours, may be traced in the 
opening lines of a diary which he began to keep 
ere he had been long in Edinburgh. 

" April 9, 1787. — As I have seen a good deal 
of human life in Edinburgh, a great many charac- 
ters which are new to one bred up in the shades 
of life, as I have been, I am determined to take 
down my remarks on the spot. Gray observes, in 
a letter to Mr. Palgrave, that, ' half a word fixed, 
upon, or near the spot, is worth a cart-load of re- 
collection.' I don't know how it is v.'ith the world 
in general, but with me, making my remarks is 
by no means a solitary pleasure. I want some 
one to laugh with me, some one to be grave with 
me, some one to please me and help my discrimi- 
nation, with his or her own remark, and at times, 
no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetra- 
tion. The world are so busied with selfish pur- 
suits, ambition, vanity, interest, or pleasure, that 
very few think it worth their while to make any 
observation on what passes around them, except 
wl ore the observation is a sucker, or branch, of 
the darling plant they are rearing in their fancy. 
Nor am I sure, notwithstanding all the sentimental 
Jlights of novel-writers y and the sage philosophy of 
moralists, whether we are capable of so intimate 
and cordial a coalition of friendship, as that one 
man may pour out his bosom, his every thought and 
floating fancy, his very inmost soul, with unreserv- 
ed confidence, to another, without hazard of losing 



ROBERT BURNS. 133 

pari of that respect which man deserves from 
man; or, from the unavoidable imperfections 
attending human nature, of one day repenting 
his confidence. 

" For these reasons I am determined to make 
these pages my confident. I will sketch every 
character that any way strikes me, to the best of 
my power, with unshrinking justice. I will in- 
sert anecdotes, and take down remarks, in the old 
law phrase, without feud or favor. — Where I hit 
on any thing clever, my own applause will, in 
some measure, feast my vanity ; and, begging 
Patroclus' and Achates' pardon, I think a lock 
and key a security, at least equal to the bosom 
of any friend whatever." 

And the same lurking thorn of suspicion peeps 
out elsewhere in this complaint : " I know not how 
it is ; I find I can win liking — but not respect.^^ 

" Burns," says a great living poet, in comment- 
ing on the free style, in which Dr. Currie did not 
hesitate to expose some of the weaker parts of his 
behavior, very soon at\er the grave had closed on 
him, — " Burns was a man of extraordinary ge- 
nius, whose birth, education, and employments 
had placed and kept him in a situation far below 
that in which the writers and readers of expensive 
volumes are usually found. Critics upon works of 
fiction have laid it down as a rule that remoteness 
of place, in fixing the choice of a subject, and in 
prescribing the mode of treating it, is equal in 
effect to distance of time ; — restraints may be 
thrown off accordingly. Judge then of the delu- 
sions which artificial distinctions impose, when to 
a man like Doctor Currie, writing with views so 
honorable, the social condition of the individual 
of whom he was treating, could seem to place him 



134 LIFE OF 

at such a distance from the exalted reader, that 
ceremony might be discarded with him, and his 
memory sacrificed, as it were, almost without 
compunction. This is indeed to be crushed he- 
neath the furrow's weight.^''* 

It would be idle to suppose that the feelings 
here ascribed, and justly, no question, to the ami- 
able and benevolent Currie, did not often find their 
way into the bosoms of those persons of superior 
condition and attainments, with whom Burns as- 
sociated at the period when he first emerged into 
the blaze of reputation ; and what found its way 
into men's bosoms was not likely to avoid betray, 
ing itself to the perspicacious glance of the proud 
peasant. How perpetually he was alive to the 
dread of being looked down upon as a man, even 
by those who most zealously applauded the works 
of his genius, might perhaps be traced through 
the whole sequence of his letters. When writ- 
ing to men of high station, at least, he preserves, 
in every instance, the attitude of self-defense. 
But it is only in his own secret tables that we 
have the fibres of his heart laid bare ; and the 
cancer of this jealousy is seen distinctly at its 
painful work ; habemns reum et conjitentem. 

" There are few of the sore evils under the sun 
give me more uneasiness and chagrin than the 
comparison how a man of genius, nay, of avowed 
worth, is received every where, with the recep- 
tion which a mere ordinary character, decorated 
with the trappings and futile distinctions of for- 
tune, meets. I imagine a man of abilities, his 
breast glowing with honest pride, conscious that 
men are born equal, still giving honor to whom ho. 

♦ Mr. Wordsworth's letter to a friend of Burns, p. 12. 



ROBERT BUKNS. 135 

nor is due ; he meets, at a great man's table, a 
Squire something, or a Sir somebody ; he knows 
the noble landlord, at heart, gives ihe bard, or 
whatever he is, a share of his good wishes, be- 
yond, perhaps, any one at table ; yet how will it 
mortify him to see a fellow, whose abilities would 
scarcely have made an eightpenny tailor, and 
whose heart is not worth three farthings, meet 
with attention and notice, that are withheld from 
the son of genius and poverty ? 

" The noble Glencairn has wounded me to the 
soul here, because I dearly esteem, respect, and 
love him. He showed so much attention — en- 
grossing attention, one day, to the only blockhead 
at table, (the whole company consisted of his 
lordship, dunderpate, and myself,) that I was 
within half a point of throwing down my gage 
of contemptuous defiance ; but he shook my 
hand, and looked so benevolently good at parting 
— God bless him ! though I should never see him 
more, I shall love him until my dying day ! I am 
pleased to think I am so capable of the throes of 
gratitude, as I am miserably deficient in some 
other virtues. 

" With Dr. Blair I am more at my ease. I 
never respect him with humble veneration ; but 
when he kindly interests himself in my welfare, 
or still more, when he descends from his pinnacle, 
and meets me on equal ground in conversation, 
my heart overflows with what is called liking. 
When he neglects me for the mere carcass of 
greatness, or when his eye measures the differ- 
ence of our points of elevation, I ^y to myself, 
with scarcely any emotion, what do I care for 
him. or his pomp either ?" 

**it is not easy," says Burns, attempting to be 



136 LIFE OF 

more philosophical — " It is not easy forming an 
exact judgment of any one ; but, in my opinion, 
Dr. Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what 
industry and application can do. Natural parts 
like his are frequently to be met with ; his vanity 
is proverbially known among his own acquaintan- 
ces ; but he is justly at the head of what may be 
called fine writing, and a critic of the first, the 
very first rank in prose ; even in poetry a hard of 
nature's making can only take the pas of him. He 
has a heart, not of the very finest water, but far 
from being an ordinary one. In short, he is a 
truly worthy and most respectable character." 

" Once," says a nice speculator on the ' follies 
of the wise,'* — " Once we were nearly receiving 
from the hand of genius the most curious sketches 
of the temper, the irascible humors, the delicacy 
of soul, even to its shadowiness, from the warm 
sbozzos of Burns, when he began a diary of his 
heart — a narrative of characters and events, and 
a chronology of his emotions. It was natural for 
such a creature of sensation and passion to pro- 
ject such a regular task, but quite impossible to 
get through it." This most curious document, it 
is to be observed, has not yet been printed entire. 
Another generation will, no doubt, see the whole 
of the confession ; however, what has already 
been given, it may be surmised, indicates suffi- 
ciently the complexion of Burns' prevailing moods 
during his moments of retirement at this inter- 
esting period of his history. It was in such a 
mood (they recurred ofien enough) that he thus 
reproached " Nature, partial nature :" 

* D'Israeli gn the Literary Character, vol. i. p. 13J 



ROBERT BURNS. 137 

" Thou givest the ass his hide, the snail his shell ; 
The invenom'd wasp victorious guards his cell : 
But, oh! thou bitter stepmother, and hard, 

To thy poor fenceless naked child, the bard 

In naked feeling and in aching pride, 

He bears the unbroken blast from every side." 



There was probably no blast that pierced this 
haughty soul so sharply as the contumely of con- 
descension. 

" One of the poet's remarks," as Cromek tells 
us, " when lie first came to Edinburgh, was that 
between the men of rustic life and the polite world 
he observed little difference — that in the former, 
though unpolished by fashion and unenlightened 
by science, he had found much observation, and 
much intelligence — but a refined and accomplish- 
ed woman was a thing almost new to him, and of 
which he had formed but a very inadequate idea." 
To be pleased, is the old and the best receipt how 
to please ; and there is abundant evidence that 
Burns' success, among the high-born ladies of 
Edinburgh, was much greater than among the 
" stately patricians," as he calls them, of his own 
sex. The vivid expression of one of them has al- 
most become proverbial — that she never met with 
a man, " whose conversation so completely car- 
ried her off her feet," as Burns' ; and Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, in his reference to the testimony of the 
late Duchess of Gordon, has no doubt indicated 
the twofold source of the fascination. But even 
here, he was destined to feel ere long something 
of the fickleness of fashion. He confessed to 
one of his old friends, ere the season was over, 
that some who had caressed him the most zeal- 
ousW, no longer seemed to know him, when he 



138 LIFE OP 

bowed in passing their carriages, and many more 
acknowledged his salute but coldly. 

It is but too true, that ere this season was over, 
Burns had formed connections in Edinburgh which 
could not have been regarded with much approba- 
tion by the eminent literati, in whose society his 
debut had made so powerful an impression. But 
how much of the blame, if serious blame, indeed, 
there was in the matter, ought to attach to his 
own fastidious jealousy — how much to the mere 
caprice of human favor, we have scanty means 
of ascertaining : No doubt, both had their share ; 
and it is also sufficientl}' apparent that there were 
many points in Burns' conversational habits, which 
men, accustomed to the delicate observancesof re- 
fined society, might be more willing to tolerate 
under the first excitement of personal curiosity, 
than from any very deliberate estimate of the 
claims of such a genius, under such circumstances 
developed. He by no means restricted his sar- 
castic observations on those whom he encountered 
in the world to the confidence of his note-book ; 
but startled polite ears with the utterance of au- 
dacious epigrams, far too witty not to obtain ge- 
neral circulation in so small a society as that of 
the northern capital, far too bitter not to produce 
deep resentment, far too numerous not to spread 
fear almost as widely as admiration. Even when 
nothing was farther from his thoughts than to in- 
flict pain, his ardor often carried him headlong 
into sad scrapes : witness, for example, the anec- 
dote given by Professor Walker, of his entering 
into a long discussion of the merits of the popu- 
lar preachers of the day, at the table of Dr. Blair, 
and enthusiastically avowing his low opinion of all 
the rest in comparison with Dr. Blair's own col- 



ROBERT BURNS. 139 

league and most formidable rival — a man, certainly 
endowed with extraordinary graces of voice and 
manner, a generous and amiable strain of feeling, 
and a copious flow of language ; but having no 
pretensions either to the general accomplishments 
for which Blair was honored in a most accom- 
plished society, or to the polished elegance which 
he first introduced into the eloquence of the Scot- 
tish pulpit. Mr. Walker well describes the un- 
pleasing effects of such an escapade; the conver- 
sation during the rest of the evening, " laboring 
under that compulsory effort which was unavoida- 
ble, while the thoughts of all were full of the only 
subject on which it was improper to speak." Burns 
showed his good sense by making no effort to 
repair this blunder ; but years afterwards, he con- 
fessed that he could never recall it without exqui- 
site pain. Mr. Walker properly says, it did ho- 
nor to Dr. Blair that his kindness remained to- 
tally unaltered by this occurrence ; but the Pro- 
fessor would have found nothing to admire in that 
circumstance, had he not been well aware of the 
rarity of such good-nature among the genus irru 
labile of authors, orators, and wits. 

A specimen (which some will think worse, some 
better) is thus recorded by Cromek : " At a pri- 
vate breakfast, in a literary circle of Edinburgh, 
the conversation turned on the poetical merit and 
pathos of Gray's Elegy, a poem of which he was 
enthusiastically fond. A clergyman present, re- 
markable for his love of paradox and for his ec- 
centric notions upon every subject, distinguished 
himself by an injudicious and ill-timed attack on 
this exquisite poem, which Burns, with generous 
warmth for the reputation of Gray, manfully de- 
fended. As the gentleman's remarks were rather 
12 



140 LIFE OF 

general than specific, Burns urged him to bring 
forward the passages which he thought exception- 
able. He made several attempts to quote the 
poem, but always in a blundering, inaccurate man- 
ner. Burns bore all this for a good while with 
his usual good-natured forbearance, till at length, 
goaded by the fastidious criticisms and wretched 
quibblings of his opponent, he roused himself, and 
with an eye flashing contempt and indignation, 
and with great vehemence ofgesticidation, he thus 
addressed the cold critic : ' Sir, I now perceive a 
man may be an excellent judge of poetry by square 
and rule, and after all be a d — d blockhead ;' " — 
so fur, Mr. Croraek ; and all this was to a clergy- 
man, and at breakfast. 

While the second edition of his Poems was pass- 
ing through the press. Burns was favored with 
many critical suggestions and amendments ; to one 
of which only he attended. Blair, reading over 
with him, or hearing him recite (which he delight- 
ed at all times in doing) his Holy Fair, stopped 
him at the stanza — 

Now a' the congreg-ation o'er 

Is silent expectation, 
For Russclspecls the holy door 

Wi' tidings ©' Salvation. — 

Nay, said the doctor, read damnation. Burns^ 
improved the wit of this verse, undoubtedly, by 
adopting the emendation ; but he gave another 
strange specimen of want oitact, when he insisted 
that Dr. Blair, one of the most scrupulous obser- 
vers of clerical propriety, should permit him to ac- 
knowledge the obligation in a note. 

But to pass from these trifles, it needs no eflbrt 
of imagination to conceive what the sensations of 
an isolated set of scholars (almost all either clergy- 
men or professors) must have been in the pre- 



ROBBRT BURNS. 141 

sence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny 
stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who, having 
forced his way among them from the plough-taii 
at a single stride, manifested, in the whole strain of 
his bearing and conversation, a most thorough con- 
viction, that, in the society of the most eminent 
men of his nation, he was exactly where he was 
entitled to be ; hardly deigned to flatter them by 
exhibiting even an occasional symptom of being 
flattered by their notice; by turns calmly measured 
himself against the most cultivated understandings 
of his time in discussion ; overpowered the hon 
mots of the most celebrated convivialists by broad 
floods of merriment, impregnated with all the 
burning life of genius ; astounded bosoms habitu- 
ally enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social 
reserve, by compelling them to tremble — nay to 
tremble visibly — beneath the fearless touch of na- 
tural pathos ; and all this without indicating the 
smallest willingness to be ranked among those pro- 
fessional ministers of excitement, who are content 
to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the 
spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing 
in their own persons, even if they had the power of 
doing it ; and, — last and probably worst of all, — 
who was known to be in the habit of enlivening 
societies which they would have scorned to ap- 
proach, still more frequently than their own, with 
eloquence no less magnificent; with wit in all like- 
lihood still more daring ; otlen enough, as the su- 
periors whom he fronted without alarm might have 
guessed t>om the beginning, and had, ere long, no 
occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves. 
The lawyers of Edinburgh, in whose wider cir- 
cles Burns figured at his outset, with at least as 
much success as among the professional literati, 



142 LIFE OF 

were a very different race of men from these ; they 
would neither, I take it, have pardoned rudeness, 
nor been alarmed by wit. But being, in those days, 
with scarcely an exception, members of the landed 
aristocracy of the country, and forming by far the 
most influential body (as indeed they still do) in 
the society of Scotland, they were, perhaps, as 
proud a set of men as ever enjoyed the tranquil 
pleasures of unquestioned superiority. What their 
haughtiness, as a body, was, may be guessed, when 
we know that inferior birth was reckoned a fair 
and legitimate ground for excluding any man from 
the bar. In one remarkable instance, about this 
very time, a man of very extraordinary talents and 
accomplishments was chiefly opposed in a long and 
painful struggle for admission, and, in reality, for 
no reasons but those I have been alluding to, by 
gentlemen who in the sequel stood at the very 
head of the whig party in Edinburgh; and thesame 
aristocratical prejudice has, within the memory of 
the present generation, kept more persons of emi- 
nent qualifications in the background, for a season, 
than any English reader would easily believe. 
To this body belonged nineteen out of twenty of 
those "patricians," whose statelinessBurns so long 
remembered and so bitterly resented. It might, 
perhaps, have been well for him had stateliness 
been the worst fault of their manners. Wine-bib- 
bing appears to be in most regions a favorite in- 
dulgence with those whose brains and lungs are 
subject to the severe exercises of legal study and 
forensic practice. To this day, more traces of these 
old habits linger about the inns of court than in 
any other section of London. In Dublin and Edin- 
burgh, the barristers are even now eminently con- 
vivial bodies of men ; but among the Scotch law- 



ROBERT BURNS. Hf^ 

yers of the time of Burns, the principle of joUity 
was indeed in its "high and palmy state." He par- 
took largely in those tavern scenes of audacious 
hilarity, which then soothed, as a matter of course, 
the arid labors of the northern noblesse de la robe, 
(so they are well called in Redgaunilet,) and of 
which we are favored with a specimen in the 
*' High Jenks" chapter of Gw^ Mannering, 

The tavern-life is now-a-days nearly extinct 
everywhere ; but it was then in full vigor in Ed- 
inburgh, and there can be no doubt that Burns 
rapidly familiarized himself with it during his re- 
sidence. He had, after all, tasted but rarely of 
such excesses while in Ayrshire. So little are we 
to consider his Scotch Drink, and other jovial 
strains of the early period, as conveying any thing 
like a fair notion of his actual course of life, that 
" Auld Nanse Tinnock," or " Poosie Nancie," 
the Maucliline landlady, is known to have ex- 
pressed, amusingly enough, her surprise at the 
style in which she found her name celebrated in 
the Kilmarnock edition, saying, "that Robert 
Burns might be avery clever lad, but he certainly 
was regardless, as, to the best of her belief, he 
had never taken three half-mutchkins in her house 
in all his life."* And in addition to Gilbert's tes- 
timony to the same purpose, we have on record 
that of Mr. Archibald Bruce, (qualified by Heron, 
" a gentleman of great worth and discernment,") 
that he had observed Burns closely during that 
period of his life, and seen him " steadily resist 
such solicitations and allurements to excessive 
convivial enjoyment, as hardly any other person 
could have withstood." 

* Mr. R. ('hambers' MS. notes, taken dui-ing- a tour in 
Avshire. 

12* 



144 LIFE OF 

The unfortunate Heron knew Burns well ; and 
himself mingled largely* in some of the scenes to 
which he adverts in the following strong language: 
" The enticements of pleasure too often unman 
our virtuous resolution, even while we wear the 
air of rejecting them with a stern brow. We resist, 
and resist, and resist ; but, at last, suddenly turn, 
and passionately embrace the enchantress. The 
bucks of Edinburgh accomplished, in regard to 
Burns, that in which the boors of Ayrshire had 
failed. After residing some months in Edinburgh, 
he began to estrange himself, not altogether, but 
in some measure, from graver friends. Too many 
of his hours were now spent at the tables of per- 
sons who delighted to urge conviviality to drunk- 
enness — in the tavern — and in the brolhel.""!" 

It would be idle 7ww to attempt passing over 
these things in silence ; but it could serve no 
good purpose to dwell on them. 

During this winter, Burns continued, as has 
been mentioned, to lodge with John Richmond; 
and we have the authority of this early friend of 
the poet for the statement, that while he did so, 
" he kept good hours. "J He removed afterwards to 
the house of Mr. William Nicoll(one of the teach- 
ers of the High School of Edinburgh, )on the Buc- 
cleuch road: and this change is, I suppose,to be con- 
sidered as a symptom that the keeping of good 
hours was beginning to be irksome. Nicoll was a 
man of quick parts and considerable learning — 
who had risen from a rank as humble as Burns' : 
from the beginning an enthusiastic admirer, and, 
ere long, a constant associate of the poet, and a 

* See Burns' allusions to Heron's own habits, in a Poeti- 
cal Epistle to Blacklock. 
t Heron, p. 27. * Notes by Mr. R. Chambers. 



ROBEKT BURNS. 1 45 

most dangerous associate ; for, with a warm heart, 
the man united a fierce, irascible temper, a scorn 
of many of the decencies of life, a noisy contempt 
of religion, at least of the religious institutions of 
his country, and a violent propensity for the bottle. 
He was one of those who would fain believe them- 
selves to be men of genius ; and that genius is a 
sufficient apology for trampling under foot all the 
old vulgar rules of prudence and sobriety, — being 
on both points equally mistaken. Of Nicoll's let- 
ters to Burns, and about him, I have seen many 
that have never been, and probably that never 
will be printed — cumbrous and pedantic effusions, 
exhibiting nothing that one can imagine to have 
been pleasing to the poet, except what was pro- 
bably enough to redeem all imperfections — name- 
ly, a rapturous admiration of his genius. This 
man, nevertheless, was, I suspect, very far from 
being an unfavorable specimen of the society to 
which Heron thus alludes : " He (the poet) svf- 
fered himself to be surrounded by a race of mise- 
rable beings, who were proud to tell that they had 
been in company with Burts's, and had seen Burns 
as loose and as foolish as themselves. He was not 
yet irrecoverably lost to temperance and modera- 
tion ; but he was already almost too much capti- 
vated with their wanton revels, to be ever more 
won back to a faithful attachment to their more 
sober charms." Heron adds — " He now also be- 
gan to contract something of new arrogance in 
conversation. Accustomed to be, among his fa- 
vorite associates, what is vulgarly, but expres- 
sively called, the cock of the company, he could 
scarcely refrain from indulging in similar free- 
dom and dictatorial decision of talk, even in the 
presence of persons who could less patiently en- 



146 LIFE OF 

dure his presumption ;"* an account ex facie pro- 
bable, and which sufficiently tallies with some 
hints in Mr. Dugald Stewart's description of the 
poet's manners, as he first observed him at Ca- 
trine, and with one or two anecdotes already cited 
from Walker and Cromek. 

Of these failings, and indeed of all Burns* 
failings, it may be safely asserted, that there was 
more in his history to account and apologize for 
them, than can be alledged in regard to almostany 
other great man's imperfections. We have seen, 
bow, even in his earliest days, the strong thirst 
of distinction glowed within him — how in his first 
and rudest rhymes he sung, 

" to be great is charming ;" 

and we have also seen, that the display of talent 
in conversation was the first means of distinction 
that occurred to him. It was by that talent that he 
first attracted notice among his fellow-peasants, 
and after he mingled with the first Scotsmen of 
his time, this talent was still that which appeared 
the most astonishing of all he possessed. What 
wonder that he should delight in exerting it where 
he could exert it the most freely — where there 
was no check upon a tongue that had been accus- 
tomed to revel in the license of village-mastery ? 
where every sally, however bold, was sure to be 
received v/ith triumphant applause — where there 
were no claims to rival his — no proud brows to 
convey rebuke — above all, perhaps, no grave eyes 
to convey regret? " Nonsense," says Cumberland, 
" talked by men of wit and understanding in the 
hours of relaxation, is of the very finest essence 

* Heron, p. 28. 



ROBERT BURNS. 147 

of conviviality ; but it implies a trust in the com- 
pany not always to be risked." It was little in 
Burns' character to submit to nice and scrupu- 
lous rules, when he knew that, by crossing the 
street, he could find society who would applaud 
him the more, the more heroically all such rules 
were disregarded ; and he who had passed from 
the company of the jolly bachelors of Tarbolton 
and Mauchline, to that of the eminent Scotsmen 
whose names were honored all over the civilized 
world, without discovering any difference that ap- 
peared worthy of much consideration, was well 
prepared to say, with the prince of all free-speak- 
ers and free-livers, " I will take mine ease in mine 
inn !" 

But these, assuredly, were not the only feelings 
that influenced Burns : In his own letters, written 
during his stay in Edinburgh, we have the best 
evidence to the contrary. He shrewdly suspected, 
from the very beginning, that the personal notice 
of the great and the illustrious was not to be as 
lasting as it was eager : he foresaw, that sooner 
or later he was destined to revert to societies less 
elevated above the pretensions of his birth : and, 
though his jealous pride might induce him to re- 
cord his suspicions in language rather too strong 
than too weak, it is quite impossible to read what 
he wrote without believing that a sincere distrust 
lay rankling at the roots of his heart, all the while 
that he appeared to be surrounded with an atmo- 
sphere of joy and hope. 

On the 15th of January, 1787, wo find him thus 
addressing his kind patroness, Mrs. Dunlop : 

"You are afraid I shall grow intoxicated with 
my prosperity as a poet. Alas ! madam, I know 
myself and the world too well. I do not mean any 
airs of afl^ected modesty ; I am willing to believe 



148 LIFE OP 

that my abilities deserved some notice ; but in a' 
most enlightened, informed age and nation, when 
poetry is and has been the study of men of the 
first natural genius, aided with all the powers of 
polite learning, polite books, and polite company 
— to be dragged forth to the full glare of learned 
and polite observation, with all my imperfections 
of awkward rusticity, and crude, unpolished ideas, 
on my head, — I assure you, madam, I do not dis- 
semble, when I tell you I tremble for the conse- 
quences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure 
situation, without any of those advantages which 
are reckoned necessary for that character, at least: 
at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of 
public notice, which has borne me to a height 
where I am absolutely, feelingly certain, my abili- 
ties are inadequate to support me ; and too surely 
do I see that time, when the same tide will leave 
me, and recede perhaps as far below the mark 

of truth I mention this once for all, to 

disburden my mind, and I do not wish to hear or 
say any more about it. But — 'When proud for- 
tune's ebbing tide recedes,' you will bear me wit- 
ness, that when my bubble of fame was at the- 
highest, I stood unintoxicated with the inebriating 
cup in my hand, looking foncard with rueful re- 
solve.^^ 

And about the same time, to Dr. Moore : *' The 
hope to be admired for ages is, in by far the- 
greater part of those even who are authors of re- 
pute, an unsubstantial dream. For my part, my 
first ambition was, and still my strongest wish is, 
to please my compeers, the rustic inmates of the 
hamlet, while ever-changing language and man- 
ners shall allow me to be relished and understood. 
I am very willing to admit that I have some poe- 



ROBUST BURNS. 149 

tical abilities : and as few, if any writers, either 
moral or poetical, are intimately acquainted with 
the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly 
mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a 
different phasis from what is common, which may 

assist originality of thought I scorn 

the affectation of seeming modesty to cover self- 
conceit. That I have some merit, I do not deny ; 
but I see, with frequent wringings of heart, that 
the novelty of my character, and the honest na- 
tional prejudice of my countrymen, have borne me 
to a height altogether untenable to my abilities." 
—And lastly, April 23d, 1787, we have the follow, 
ing passage in a letter also to Dr. Moore : *' I 
leave Edinburgh in the course of ten days or a 
fortnight. I shall return to my rural shades, in all 
likelihood never more to quit them. I have formed 
many intimacies and friendships here, hut I am 
afraid they are all of too tender a construction to 
hear carriage a hundred and fifty miles. ^^ 

One word more on the subject which intro- 
duced these quotations : Mr. Dugald Stewart, no 
doubt, hints at what was a common enough com- 
plaint among the elegant literati of Edinburgh, 
when he alludes, in his letter to Currie, to the 
" not very select society" in which Burns indulged 
himself. But two points still remain somewhat 
doubtful ; namely, whether show and marvel of 
the season as he was, the " Ayrshire ploughman" 
really had it in his power to live always in socie- 
ty which Mr. Stewart would have considered as 
"very select;" and secondly, whether, in so doing 
he could have failed to chill the affection of those 
humble Ayrshire friends, who, having shared with 
him all that they possessed on his first arrival in 
the metropolis, faithfully and fondly adhered to 



150 LIFE OF 

him, after the spring-tide of fashionable favor did, 
as he forsaw it would do, " recede ;" and, more- 
over, perhaps to provoke, among the highercircles 
themselves, criticisms more distasteful to his proud 
stomach, than any probable consequences of the 
course of conduct which he actually pursued. 

The second edition of Burns' poems was pub- 
lished early in March, by Creech ; there were no 
less than 1500 subscribers, many of whom paid 
more than the shop-price of the volume. Al- 
though, therefore, the final settlement with the 
bookseller did not take place till nearly a year af- 
ter. Burns now found himself in possession of a 
considerable sum of ready money ; and the first 
impulse of his mind was to visit some of the 
classic scenes of Scottish history and romance.* 
He had as yet se'en but a small part of his own 
country, and this by no means among the most 
interesting of her districts, until, indeed, his own 
poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other. 
The magnificent scenery of the capital itself had 
filled him with extraordinary delight. In the spring 
mornings, he walked very often to the top of Ar- 
thur's Seat, and, lying prostrate on the turf, sur- 
veyed the rising of the sun out of the sea, in si- 
lent admiration ; his chosen companion on such 

♦ "The appellation of a Scottish bard is by far my high- 
est pride ; to continue to deserve it, is my most exalted am- 
bition.' Scottish scenes, and Scottish storj', are the themes 
I could wish to sing-. I have no dearer aim than to have it 
in my power, unplag-ued with the routine of business, for 
which, Heaven knows, I am unfit enough, to make leisurely 
pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields of her 
battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and 
to muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the 
honored abodes of her heroes. But these arc Utopian views." 
—Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Edinburgh, 22d March, 1787. 



ROBERT BURNS. 151 

occasions being that ardent lover of nature, and 
learned artist, Mr. Alexander Nasmyth.* The 
Braid hills, to the south of Edinburgh, were also 
among his favorite morning walks ; and it was in 
some of these that Mr. Dugald Stewart tells us 
" he charmed him still more by his private con- 
versation than he had ever done in company." 
" He was," adds the professor, " passionately fond 
of the beauties of nature, and I recollect once he 
told me, when I was admiring a distant prospect 
in one of our morning walks, that the sight of so 
many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his 
mind whicn none could understand who had not 
witnessed, like himself, the happiness and the 
worth which they contained." 

Burns was far too busy with society and obser- 
vation to find time for poetical composition, during 
this first residence in Edinburgh. Creech's edi- 
tion included some pieces of great merit which 
had not been previously printed ; but, with the 
exception of the Address to Edinburgh^ which is 
chiefly remarkable for the grand stanzas on the 
Castle and Holyrood, with which it concludes, 

* It was to this venerable artist that Burns sat for the 
portrait engraved in Creech's edition, and since repeated so 
often, that it must be familiar to all readers. Mr. Nasmyth 
has kindly prepared for the present Memoirs a sketch of 
the Poet at full-leng-th, as he appeared in Edinburgrh in the 
first hey-day of his reputation ; dressed in ti^-ht -jockey 
boots, and very tig-ht buckskin breeches, accormng- to the 
fashion of the day, and (Jacobite as he was) in what was 
considered as the Fox livery, viz. a blue coat and butf 
waistcoat, with broad blue stripes. The surviving" friends 
of Burns, who have seen this vig-nette, are unanimous in 
pronouncing- it to furnish a very lively representation of the 
bard as lie first attracted public notice in the streets of 
Edinburgfh. The scenery of the back-g-round is very nearly 
ihat of Ikiins' native spot— the kii-k of Alloway and the 
bridg-c of Duon. 

18 



152 LIFE OF 

all of these appear to have been written before he 
left Ayrshire. Several of them, indeed, were very 
early productions : The most important additions 
were ,Death and Doctor Hornbook, The Brigs of 
Ayr, The Ordination, and the Address to the unco 
Guid. In this edition also, When Guilford guid 
our pilot stood, made its first appearance, on read- 
ing which, Dr. Blair uttered his pithy criticism, 
" Burns' politics always smell of the smithy." 

It ought not to be omitted, that our poet be- 
stowed some of the first fruits of this edition in the 
erection of a decent tombstone over the hitherto 
neglected remains of his unfortunate predecessor, 
Robert Ferguson, in the Canongate churchyard. 

The evening before he quitted Edinburgh, the 
poet addressed a letter to Dr. Blair, in which, ta- 
king a most respectful farewell of him, and ex- 
pressing, in lively terms, his sense of gratitude for 
the kindness he had shown him, he thus recurs to 
his own views of his own past and future condi- 
tion : " I have often felt the embarrassment of my 
singular situation. However the meteor-like no- 
velty of my appearance in the world might attract 
notice, I knew very well, that my utmost merit 
was far unequal to the task of preserving that 
character when once the novelty was over. I 
have made up my mind, that abuse, or almost 
even neglect, will not surprise me in my quar- 
ters." — To this touching letter the amiable Blair 
replied in a truly paternal strain of consolation 
and advice. — " Your situation," says he, " was 
indeed very singular: you have had to stand a se- 
vere trial. I am happy that you have stood it so 

well You are now, 1 presume, to retire 

to a more private walk of life You 

have laid the foundation for jus I public esteem. 



ROBERT BtRNS. l53 

In ihe midst of those employments, which your situ- 
atioii will render proper, you will not, I hope, 
neglect to promote that esteem, by cultivating 
your genius, and attending to such productions of 
it as may raise your character still higher. At 
the same time, be not in too great a haste to come 
forward. Take time and leisure to improve and 
mature your talents ; for, on any second produc- 
tion you give the world, your fate, as a poet, will 
very much depend. There is, no doubt, a gloss 
of novelty which time wears off. As you very 
properly hint yourself, you are not surprised if, in 
your rural retreat, you do not find yourself sur- 
rounded with that glare of notice and applause 
which here shone upon you. No man can be a 
good poet without being somewhat of a philoso- 
pher. He must lay his account, that any one who 
exposes himself to public observation, will occa- 
sionally meet with the attacks of illiberal censure 
which it is always best to overlook and despise. 
He will be inclined sometimes to court retreat, 
and to disappear from public view. He will not 
affect to shine always, that he may at proper sea- 
sons come forth with more advantage and ener- 
gy. He will not think himself neglected if he be 
not always praised." Such were Blair's admo- 
nitions, 

" And part was heard, and part was lost in air." 

Burns had one object of worldly business in 
his journey ; namely, to examine the estate of 
Dalswinton, near Dumfries, the proprietor of 
which had on learning that the poet designed to 
return to his original calling, expressed a strong 
wish to have him for his tenant. 



154 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VI. 

"Ramsay and famous Ferg-uson, 
Gled Forth and Tay a lift aboon ; 
/ Yarrow and Tweed to monic a tune 

Thro' Scotland ring's, 
While Irvine, Liagar, Ayr, and Doon, 

Naebody sing's." 

On the 6th of May, Burns left Edinburgh, in 
company with Mr. Robert AinsHe,* son to Mr. 
AinsUe of Berrywell in Berwickshire, with the 
design of perambulating the picturesque scenery 
of the southern border, and in particular of visit- 
ing the localities celebrated by the old minstrels, 
of whose works he was a passionate admirer ; 
and of whom, by the way, one of the last appears 
to have been all but a namesake of his own.f 

* Now Clerk to the Sig-net. Among' other chang-es "which 
fleeting- time procureth," this amiable g-entleman, whose 
youthful gaiety made him a chosen associate of Burns, is 
now chiefly known as the author of some Manuals of Devo- 
tion. 

t Nicoll Burn, supposed to have lived towards the close 
of the 16th century, and to have been among" the last of the 
itinerant minstrels. He is the author of Leader Haugbs and 
Yarrow, a pathetic ballad, in the last verse of which his own 
name and desig^nation are introduced. 

" Sing Erlington and Cowden knowes, where Homes had ance com- 
mand inj^; 

And Drygrange, wi' the milk white ewes, 'twixt Tweed and Leader 
standing. 

The bird that flees thro' Reedpath trees, and Gledswood banks, ilk 
morrow, 

May chant and sing sweet Leader Haughs, and bonny howms of 
Yarrow. 

But minstrel Burn cannot assuage his grief while life endureth. 

To see the changes of tliis age, that fleeting time procureth. 

For mony a place stands in hard case, where Uythe iolk kend nae 
sorrow ; 

With Homes that dwelt on Leader side, and Scotts that dwelt oa 
Yarrow." 



ROBERT BURNS. 155 

This V/.1S long before the time when those fields 
ot" Scottish romance were to be made accessible to 
the curiosity of citizens b}^ stage-coaches ; and 
Burns and his friend performed their tour on 
horseback ; the former being mounted on a favor- 
ite mare, whom he had named Jenny Geddes, in 
honor of the zealous virago who threw her stool 
at the Dean of Edinburgh's head on the 23d of 
July 1637, when the attempt was made to intro- 
duce a Scottish Liturgy in the service of St. 
Giles' ; — the same trusty animal, whose merits 
have been recorded by Burns, in a letter, which 
must have been puzzling to most modern Scots- 
men, before the days of Dr. Jamieson.* 

Burns passed from Edinburgh to Berry well, the 
residence of Mr. Ainslie's family, and visited sue- 
cessively Dunse, Coldstream, Kelso, Fleurs, and 
the ruins of Roxburgh Castle, near which a holly- 
bush still marks the spot on which James II. of 
i5cotiand was killed by the bursting of a cannon. 
Jedburgh — where he admired the " charming ro- 
mantic situation of the town, with gardens and 
orchards intermingled among the houses of a once 
magnificent cathedral (abbey) ;" and was struck 
(as in the other towns of the same district,) with 
the appearance of " old rude grandeur," and the 
idleness of decay ; Melrose, " that far-famed 



* " My auld g-a'd gleyde o' a meere has huchj^alled up 
hill and down brae, as teuch and birnie as a vera devil, wi' 
me. It's true she's as puir's a sang-maker, and as hard's a 
kirk, and lipper-laipers when she takes the gate, like a la- 
dy's g'cnolewornan in a minuwae, or a hen on a het girdle; 
but she's a yauld poutherin girran for a' that. When ance 
her ringbanes and pavies, her cruiks and cramps, are 
fairly soupled, she beets to, beets to, and aye the hindmost 
hour the lightest," etc. (fee. — Letter to Mr. SicoU, Reliqries, 
p. 28. 

13* 



156 ROBERT BURNS. 

glorious ruin," Selkirk, Ettrick, and tlie braes of 
Yarrow. Having spent three weeks in this dis- 
trict, of which it has been justly said, "that eve- 
ry field has its battle, and every rivulet its song," 
Burns passed the Border, and visited Alnwick, 
Warkworth, Morpeth, Newcastle, Hexham War- 
drue, and Carlisle. He then turned northwards, 
and rode by Annan and Dumfries to Dalswinton, 
where he examined Mr. Miller's property, and 
was so much pleased with the soil, and the terms 
on which the landlord was willing to grant him a 
lease, that he resolved to return again in the 
course of the summer. 

Dr. Currie has published some extracts from 
the journal which Burns kept during this excur- 
sion ; but they are mostly very trivial. He was 
struck with the superiority of soil, climate, and 
cultivation, in Berwick and Roxburghshires, as 
compared with his native country ; and not a lit- 
tle surprised, when he dined at a farmers' Club at 
Kelso, with the apparent wealth of that order of 
men. — "All gentlemen, talking of high matters 
— each of them keeps a hunter from 307. to 60Z. 
value, and attends the Fox-hunting Ciub in the 
county." The farms in the west of Scotland are, 
to this day, very small for the most part, and the 
farmers little distinguished from their laborers in 
their modes of life : the contrast was doubtless 
stronger, forty years ago, between them and their 
brethren of the Lothians and the Merse. 

The magistrates of Jedburgh presented Burns 
with the freedom of their town : he was unprepared 
for the compliment, and jealous of obligations, slept 
out of the room, and made an efrort(of course an in- 
effectual one) to pay beforehand out of his own purine 
the landlord's bill for the " riddle of claret," which 



ROBERT BURNS. 157 

is usually presented on such occasions in a Scotch 
burgh.* 

The poet visited, in the course of his tour, Sir 
James Hall of Dunglas, author of the well known 
Essay on Gothic Architecture, &c. ; Sir Alexander 
and Lady Harriet Don, (sister to his patron. Lord 
Glencairn,) at Newton-Don ; Mr. Brydone, the 
author of Travels in Sicily; the amiable and 
learned Dr. Somerville of Jedburgh, the histo- 
rian of Queen Anne, &;c.: and, as usual, re- 
corded in his journal his impressions as to their 
manners and characters. His reception was 
every where most flattering. 

He wrote no verses, as far as is known, during 
this tour, except a humorous Epistle to his book- 
seller Creech, dated Selkirk, 13th May. In this 
he makes complimentary allusions to some of the 
men of letters who were used to meet at break- 
fast in Creech's apartments in those days — 
whence the name of Creeches levee; and touches, 
too briefly, on some of the scenery he had visited. 

" Up wimpling- stately Tweed I've sped, 
And Eden scenes on crystal Jed, 
And Ettrick banks now roaring- red, 

While tempests blaw" 

Burns returned to Mauchline on the 8th of 
July. It is pleasing to imagine the delight with 
which he must have been received by his family 
after the absence of six months, in which his 
fortunes and prospects had undergone so wonder- 
ful a change. He left them comparatively un- 
known, his tenderest feelings torn and wounded 
by the behavior of the Armours, and so miser- 
ably poor, that he had been for sonrte weeks obli- 
ged to skulk from the sheritTs officers, to avoid 
* Mr. R. Chambers' notes. 



158 LIFE OF 

the payment of a paltry debt. He returned, his 
poetical fame established, the whole country ring- 
ing v/ith his praises, from a capital in which he 
was knov/n to have formed the wonder and de- 
light of the polite and the learned ; if not rich, 
yet with more money already than any of his 
kindred had ever hoped to see him possess, and 
with prospects of future patronage and perma- 
nent elevation in the scale of society which might 
have dazzled steadier eyes than those of maternal 
and fraternal affection. The prophet had at last 
honor in his own country : but the haughty spi- 
rit that had preserved its balance in Edinburgh, 
was not likely to lose it at Mauchline ; and we 
have him writing from the mild clay biggin on the 
18th of June, in terms as strongly expressive as 
any that ever came from his pen, of that jealous 
pride which formed the groundwork of his cha- 
racter ; that dark suspiciousness of fortune, which 
the subsequent course of his history too well jus- 
tified ; that nervous intolerance of condescen- 
sion, and consummate scorn of meanness, which 
attended him through life, and made the study of 
his species, for which nature had given him such 
extraordinary qualincations, the source of more 
pain than was ever counterbalanced by the ex- 
quisite capacity for enjoyment with which he 
was also endowed. There are few of his letters 
in which more of the dark places of his spirit 
come to hght : " I never, my friend, thought 
mankind capable of any thing very generous ; 
but the stateliness of the patricians of Edinburgh, 
and the servility of my plebeian brethren, (who, 
perhaps, formerly eyed me askance,) since I re- 
turned home, have nearly put me out of conceit 
altogether with my species. I have bought a 



ROBERT BURNS. 159 

pocket-Milton, which I carry perpetually about 
me, in order to study the sentiments, the daunt- 
less magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding inde- 
pendence, the desperate daring, and noble defi- 
ance of hardship, in that great personage — Sa- 
tan. . . . The many ties of acquaintance and 
friendship I have, or think I have, in life — I have 
felt along the lines, and, d — n them, they are 
almost all of them of such frail texture, that I 
am sure they would not stand the breath of the 
least adverse breeze of fortune." 

Among those who, having formerly " eyed him 
askance," now appeared sufficiently ready to court 
his society, were the family of Jean Armour. 
Burns' affection for this beautiful young woman 
had outlived his resentment of her compliance 
with her father's commands in the preceding sum- 
mer ; and from the time of this reconciliation, it 
is probable he always looked forward to a per- 
manent union with the mother of his children. 

Burns at least fancied himself to be busy with 
serious plans for his future establishment; and was 
very naturally disposed to avail himself, as far as 
he could, of the opportunities of travel and obser- 
vation, which an interval of leisure, destined pro- 
bably to be a short one, might present. Moreover, 
in spite of his gloomy language, a specimen of 
which has just been quoted, we are not to doubt 
that he derived much pleasure from witnessing the 
extensive popularity of his writings, and from the 
flattering homage he was sure to receive in his own 
person in the various districts of his native coun- 
try ; nor can any one wonder, that after the state 
of high excitement in which he had spent the win- 
ter and spring, he, fond as he was of his family, 
and eager to make them partakers in all his good 
fortune, should have, just at this time, found him- 



160 LIFE or 

self incapable of sitting down contentedly for any 
considerable period together, in so humble and 
quiet a circle as that of Mossgiel. 

His appetite for wandering appears to have been 
only sharpened by his Border excursion. After 
remaining a few days at home, he returned to 
Edinburgh, and thence proceeded on another 
short tour, by way of Stirling, to Inverary, and 
so back again, by Dumbarton and Glasgow, to 
Mauchline. Of this second excursion, no journal 
has been discovered; nor do the extracts from 
his correspondence, printed by Dr. Currie, ap- 
pear to be worthy of much notice. In one, he 
briefly describes the West Highlands as a country 
" where savage streams tumble over savage moun- 
tains, thinly overspread with savage flocks, which 
starvingly support as savage inhabitants:" and 
in another, he gives an account of Jenny Ged- 
des running a race after dinner with a Highlan- 
der's pony — of his dancing and drinking till sun- 
rise at a gentleman's house on Loch Lomond ; 
and of other similar matters. — " I have as yet,'* 
says he, ^' fixed on nothing with respect to the 
serious business of life. I am, just as usual, a 
rhyming, mason-making, raking, aimless, idle 
fellow. However, I shall somewhere have a farnt 
soon." 

In the course of this tour. Burns visited the 
mother and sisters of his friend, Gavin Hamilton, 
then residing at Harvieston, in Clackmannan- 
shire, in the immediate neighborhood of the mag- 
nificant scenery of Castle Campbell,* and the 

* Castle Campbell, called otherwise the Castle of Gloom^ 
is situated very grandly in a gorg-e of the Ochills, comnnand- 
ing- an extensive view of the plain of Stirling*. This ancient 
possession of the Arg-yll family was, in some sortj a town- 
residence for those chieftains in tlie days when the court was 



ROBERT BURNS. 161 

vale of Devon. He was especially delighted 
with one of the young ladies ; and, according to 
his usual custom, celebrated her in a song, in 
which, in opposition to his usual custom, there 
is nothing but the respectfulness of admiration. 

"How pleasant the banks of the clear winding Devon," &C' 

At Harviestonbank, also, the poet first became 
acquainted with Miss Chalmers, afterwards Mrs. 
Hay, to whom one of the most interesting series 
of his letters is addressed. Indeed, with the ex- 
ception of his letters to Mrs. Dunlop, there is, 
perhaps, no part of his correspondence which 
may be quoted so uniformly to his honor. 

It was on this expedition, that, having been vi- 
sited with a high flow of Jacobite indignation 
while viewing the neglected palace at Stirling, he 
was imprudent enough to write some verses bit- 
terly vituperative of the reigning family on the 
window of his inn. These verses were copied 
and talked of; and although the next time Burns 
passed through Stirling, he himself broke the 
pane of glass containing them, they were remem- 
bered years afterwards to his disadvantage, and 
even danger. The last couplet, alluding, in the 
coarsest style, to the melancholy state of the 
good king's health at the time, was indeed an 
outrage of which no political prejudice could have 
made a gentleman approve : but he, in all proba- 
bility, composed his verses after dinner ; and 
surely what Burns would fain have undone, others 
should have been not unwillino- to forset. In 

o o 

visually held at Stirling-, Linlithgow, or Falkland. The cas- 
tle was burnt by Montrose, and has never been repaired. 
The cauldrcn linn and rurubling brigg (jf il.e Devon lie 
near Caslic Campbell, oa the verge of the plain. 



162 LIFE OF 

this case, too, the poetry " smells of the smith^» 
shop," as well as the sentiment. 

Mr. Dugald Stewart has prdhounced Burns' 
epigrams to be, of all his writings, the least wor- 
thy of his talents. Those which he composed in 
the course of this tour, on being refused admit- 
tance to see the iron works at Carron, and on find- 
ing himself ill served at the inn at Inverary, in 
consequence of his Grace, the Duke of Argyll, 
having a large party at the Castle, form no ex- 
ceptions to the rule. He had never, we may sup- 
pose, met with the famous recipe of the Jelly-bag 
Club ; and was addicted to beginning with the 
point. 

The young ladies of Harvieston were, accord- 
ing to Dr. Currie, surprised with the calm manner 
in Vv'hich Burns contemplated their fine scenery 
on Devon water ; and the Doctor enters into a 
little dissertation on the subject, showing that a 
man of Burns' lively imagination might probably 
have formed anticipations which the realities of 
the prospect might rather disappoint. This is 
possible enough; but I suppose few will take it 
for granted that Burns surveyed any scenes either 
of beauty or of grandeur without emotion, merely 
because he did not choose to be ecstatic for the 
benefit of a company of j'oung ladies. He was 
indeed very impatient of interruption on such oc- 
casions ; I have heard that riding one dark night 
near Carron, his companion teased him with noisy 
exclamations of delight and wonder, whenever an 
opening in the wood permitted them to see the 
magnificent glare of the furnaces; "Look, Burns! 
Good Heaven ! look! look ! what a glorious sight!" 
— "Sir," said Burns, clapping spurs to Jenny 
Gcddes, " I would not look ! look ! at your bid- 
ding, if it were the mouth of hell !" 



ROBERT BURNS. 163 

Burns spent the month of July at Mossgiel ; and 
Mr. Dugald Stewart, in a letter to Currie, gives 
some recollections of him as he then appeared. 

"Notwithstanding the various reports I heard 
during the preceding winter, of Burns' predilec- 
tion for convivial, and not very select society, I 
should have concluded in favor of his habits of 
sobriety, from all of him that ever fell under my 
own observation. He told me indeed himself, 
that the weakness of his stomach was such as to 
deprive him entirely of any merit in his temper- 
ance. I was, however, somewhat alarmed about 
the effect of his now comparatively sedentary and 
luxurious life, when he confessed to me, the first 
night he spent in my house after his winter's 
campaign in town, that he had been much dis- 
turbed when in bed, by a palpitation at his heart, 
which, he said, was a complaint to which he had 
of late become subject. 

" In the course of the same season I was led 
by curiosity to attend for an hour or two a Ma- 
sonic Lodge in Mauchline, where Burns presided. 
He had occasion to make some short unpremedi- 
tated compliments to different individuals from 
whom he had no reason to expect a visit, and 
every thing he said was happily conceived, and 
forcibly as well as fluently expressed. His man- 
ner of speaking in public had evidently the marks 
of some practice in extempore elocution." 

In August, Burns revisited Stirlingshire, in com- 
pany with Dr. Adair, of Harrowgate, and ramain- 
ed ten days at Harvieston. He was received with 
particular kindness at Ochtertyre, on the Teith, 
by Mr. Ramsay (a friend of Blacklock) whose 
beautiful retreat he enthusiastically admired. His 
host was among the last of that old Scottish line 



164 LIFE OF* 

of Latinists, which began with Buchanan, and, I 
fear, may be said to have ended with Gregory. 
Mr. Ramsay, among other eccentricities, had 
sprinkled the walls of his house with Latin in- 
scriptions, some of them highly elegant ; and 
these particularly interested Burns, who asked 
and obtained copies and translations of them. 
This amiable man (whose manners and residence 
were not, I take it, out of the novelist's recollec- 
tion, when he painted Monkbarns,) was deeply 
read in Scottish antiquities, and the author of 
some learned essays on the elder poetry of his 
country. His conversation must have delighted 
any man of talents ; and Burns and he were 
mutually charmed with each other. Ramsay 
advised him strongly to turn his attention to the 
romantic drama, and proposed the Gentle Shepherd 
as a model : he also urged him to write Scottish 
Georgics, observing that Thomson had by no 
means exhausted that field. He appears to have 
relished both hints. « But," says Mr. R. " to 
have executed either plan, steadiness and ab- 
straction from company were wanting." 

" I have been in the company of many men of 
genius," writes Mr. Ramsay, "some of them poets; 
but 1 never witnessed such flashes of intellectual 
brightness as from him, the impulse of the mo- 
ment, sparks of celestial fire. I never was more 
delighted, therefore, than with his company two 
days tete-a-tete. In a mixed company I should 
have made little of him ; for, to use a gamester's 
phrase, he did not always know when to play off 
and when to play on. 

" When I asked him whether the Edinburgh 
literati had mended his poems by their criticisms — 
* Sir,' said he, * those gentlemen remind me of 
some spinsters in my country, who spin their 



ROBERT BURNS. 165 

thread so fine that it is neither fit for weft nor 

woof.' " 

At Clackmannan Tower, the Poet's jacobitism 
procured him a hearty welcome from the ancient 
lady of the place, who gloried in considering her- 
self as a lineal descendant of Robert Bruce. She 
bestowed on Burns what knighthood the touch of 
the hero's sword could confer ; and delighted him 
by giving as her toast after dinner, Hooki uncos* — 
away strangers ! At Dunfermline the poet be- 
trayed deep emotion. Dr. Adair tells us, on seeing 
the grave of the Bruce ; but, passing to another 
mood on entering the adjoining church, he mount- 
ed the pulpit, and addressed his companions, who 
had, at his desire, ascended the cuttystool, in a 
parody of the rebuke which he had himself under- 
gone some time before at Mauchline. 

From Dunfermline the poet crossed the Frith 
of Forth to Edinburgh ; and forthwith set out with 
his friend Nicoll on a more extensive tour than he 
had as yet undertaken, or was ever again to under- 
take. Some fragments of his journal have re- 
cently been discovered, and are now in my hands ; 
so that I may hope to add some interesting parti- 
culars to the account of Dr. Currie. The travel- 
ers hired a post-chaise for their expedition — the 
High-school master being, probably, no very skill- 
ful equestrian. 

" August 25th, 1787.— This day," says Burns, 
" I leave Edinburgh for a tour, in company with 
my good friend, Mr. Nicoll, whose originality of 
humor promises me much entertainment. Lin- 
lithgow. — A fertile improved country is West Lo- 

* A shepherd's cry when strang-e sheep mingle in the 
flock. 



166 LIFE OF 

thian. The more elegance and luxury among the 
farmers, I always observe, in equal proportion, the 
rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This re- 
mark 1 have made all over the Lothians, Merse, 
Roxburgh, &€.; and for this, among other reasons, 
I think that a man of romantic taste, ' a man of 
feeling,' will be better pleased with the poverty, 
but intelligent minds, of the peasantry of Ayrshire, 
(peasantry they are all, below the Justice of 
Peace,) than the opulence of a club of Merse 
farmers, when he, at the same time, considers the 
Vandalism of their plough-folks, d:c. I carry this 
idea so far, that an unin closed, unimproved coun- 
try is to me actually more agreeable as a prospect, 
than a country cultivated like a garden." 

It was hardly to be expected that Robert Burns 
should have estimated the wealth of nations en- 
tirely on the principles of a political economist. 

Of Linlithgow he says, " the town carries the 
appearance of rude, decayed, idle grandeur — 
charminglyrural retired situation— the old royal pa- 
lace a tolerably fine but melancholy ruin — sweet- 
ly situated by the brink of a loch. Shown the room 
where the beautifnl injured Mary Queen of Scots 
was born. A pretty good old Gothic church — the 
infamous stool of repentance, in the old Romish 
way, on a lofty situation. What a poor pimping 
business is a Presbyterian place of worship ; dirty, 
narrow, and squalid, stuck in a corner of old Popish 
grandeur, such as Linlithgow, and much more Mel- 
rose ! Ceremony and show, if judiciously thrown 
in, are absolutely necessary for the bulk of man- 
kind, both in religious and civil matters -" 

At Bannockburn he writes as follows : " Here 
no Scot can pass uninterested. I fancy to myself 
that I see my gallant countrymen coming over the 



ROBERT BURNS. 167 

liill, and down upon the plunderers of their coun- 
try, the murderers of their fathers, noble revenge 
and just hate glowing in every vein, striding more 
and more eagerly as they approach the oppressive, 
insulting, blood-thirsty foe. I see them meet in 
glorious triumphant congratulation on the victori- 
ous field, exulting in their heroic royal leader, and 
rescued liberty and independence."* 

Here we have the germ of Burns' famous ode 
on the battle of Bannockburn. 

At Taymouth, the Journal merely has — " de- 
scribed in rhyme.'' This alludes to the " verses 
written with a pencil over the mantle-piece of the 
parlor in the inn at Kenmore ;" some of which 
are among his best purely English heroics — 

" Poetic ardors in mj bosom swell, 

Lone wandering- by the hermit's mossy cell; 

The sweeping- theatreof hang-ing- woods; 

The incessant roar of headlong--tumbling- floods .... 

Here poesy might wake her heaven-taug-ht lyre, 

And look throug-h nature with creative fire .... 

Here, to the wrong-s of fate half reconciled, 

Misfortune's lighten'd steps mig-ht wander wild ; 

And disappointment, in these lonely bounds, 

Find balm to soothe her bitter rankling- wounds ; 

Here heart-struck g-rief mig-ht heavenward stretch her scan, 

And injured worth forg-et and pardon man." 

Of Glenlyon we have this memorandum : 



* In the last words of Burns' note above quoted, he per- 
haps glances at a beautiful trait of old Barbour, where he 
describes Bruce's soldiers as crowding- round him at the 
conclusion of one of his hard-foug-ht days, with as mucl) 
curiosity as if they had never seen his person before. 

*' Sic word is spak they of their king ; 
And for his hie undertaking- 
Perleyit and yernit him for to see. 
That with him ay was wont to be " 

14* 



168 LIFE OF 

" Druid's temple, three circles of stones, the out- 
ermost sunk, the second has thirteen stones re- 
maining, the innermost eight ; two large detached 
ones like a gate to the southeast — say prayers 
in it." 

His notes on Dunkeld and Blair of Athole are 
as follows : " Dunkeld — breakfast with Dr. 
Stuart — Neil Gow plays ; a short, stout-built, 
Highland figure, with his grayish hair shed on his 
honest social brow — an interesting face, marking 
strong sense, kind openheartedness, mixed with 
unmistrusting simplicity — visit his house — Mar- 
garet Gow. — Friday — ride up Tummel river to 
Blair. Fascally, a beautiful romantic nest — wild 
grandeur of the pass of Gillikrankie — visit the 
gallant Lord Dundee's stone. Blair — sup with 
the Duchess — easy and happy from the manners 
of that family — confirmed in my good opinion of 
my tried Walker. — Saturday — visit the scenes 
round Blair — fine, but spoilt with bad taste." 

Mr. Walker, who, as we have seen, formed 
Burns' acquaintance in Edinburgh through Black- 
lock, was at this period tutor in the family of 
Athole, and from him the following particulars of 
Burns' reception at the seat of his noble patron 
are derived : " I had often, like others, experienced 
the pleasures which arise from the sublime or ele- 
gant landscape, but I never saw those feelings so 
intense as in Burns. When we reached a rustic 
hut on the river Tilt, where it is overhung by a 
woody precipice, from which there is a noble 
waterfall, he threw himself on the heathy seat, and 
gave himself up to a tender, abstracted, and vo- 
luptuous enthusiasm of imagination. It was with 
much difficulty I prevailed on him to quit this spot, 
and to be introduced in proper time to supper. 



ROBERT BURNS. 16*J 

"He seemed at once to perceive and to appre- 
ciate what was due to the company and to himself, 
and never to forget a proper respect for the sepa- 
rate species of dignity belonging to each. He did 
not arrogate conversation, but; when led into it, he 
spoke with ease, propriety, and manliness. He 
tried to exert his abilities, because he knew it was 
ability alone gave him a title to be there. The 
duke's fine young family attracted much of his 
admiration ; he drank their healths as honest men 
and bonny lasses, an idea which was nmch ap- 
plauded by the company, and with which he has 
very felicitously closed his poem. 

" Next day 1 took a ride with him through some 
of the most remarkable parts of that neighbor- 
hood, and was highly gratified by his conversa- 
tion. As a specimen of his happiness of concep- 
tion, and strength of expression, I will mention a 
remark which he made on his fellow-traveler, 
who was walking at the time a few paces before 
us. He was a man of a robust but clumsy per- 
son ; and, while Burns was expressing to me the 
value he entertained for him, on account of his 
vigorous talents, although they were clouded at 
times by coarseness of manners — ' in short,' he 
added, ' his mind is like his body, he has a con- 
founded strong in-knee'd sort of a soul.' 

" Much attention was paid to Burns both before 
and after the Duke's return, of v/hich he was per- 
fectly sensible, without being vain ; and at his de- 
parture I recommended to him, as the most ap- 
propriate return he could make, to write some de- 
scriptive verses on any of the scenes with which 
he had been so much delighted. After leaving 
Blair, he, by the Duke's advice, visited the Falls 



170 LIFE OF 

of Bruar, and in a few days I received a letter 
from Inverness, with the verses inclosed."* 

At Blair, Burns first met with Mr. Graham of 
Fintray, a gentleman to whose kindness he was af- 
terwards indebted on more than one important 
occasion ; and Mr. Walker expresses great regret 
that he did not remain a day or two more, in which 
case he must have been introduced to Mr. Dun- 
das, afterwards Viscount Melville, who was then 
treasurer of the navy, and had the chief manage- 
ment of the affairs of Scotland. This eminent 
statesman was, though little addicted to literature, 
a v/arm lover of his own country, and, in general, 
of whatever redounded to her honor ; he was, 
moreover, very especially qualified to appreciate 
Burns as a companion ; and, had such an intro- 
duction taken place, he might not improbably 
have been induced to bestow that consideration 
on the claims of the poet, which, in the absence 
of any personal acquaintance, Burns' works ought 
to have received at his hands. 

From Blair, Burns passed "many miles through 
a wild country, among cliffs gray with eternal 
snows, and gloomy savage glens, till he crossed 
Spey ; and went down the stream through Strath- 
spey, (so famous in Scottish music,) Badenoch, 
&c., to Grant Castle, where he spent half a day 
with Sir James Grant ; crossed the country to 
Fort George, but called by the way at Cawdor, 

* The banks of the Bruar, whose naked condition called 
forth " the humble petition," to which Mr. Walker thus re- 
fers, have since those days been well cared for, and the river 
in its present state, could have no pretext for the prayer — 

*' Let lofty firs, and ashes cool, my lowly banks o'erspread, 

And view, deep bending in the pool, their shadows' watery bed ; 
Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest, my craggy cliffs adorn, 
And for the little songster's nest, the clos« embowering thorn." 



ROBERT BURNS. 171 

the ancient seat of Macbeth, where he saw the 
identical bed in which, tradition says, King Dun- 
can was murdered ; lastly, from Fort George to 
Inverness."* From Inverness, he went along 
the Murray Frith to Fochabers, taking Culloden- 
muir and Brodie-house in his way.f — " Cross 
SjDcy to Fochabers — fine palace, worthy of the 
noble, the polite, the generous proprietor — the 
Duke makes me happier than ever great man 
did ; noble, princely, yet mild, condescending, 

and affable — gay and kind. The Duchess 

charming, witty, kind, and sensible — God bless 

them." 

' Burns, who had been much noticed by this no- 
ble family when in Edinburgh, happened to present 
himself at Gordon Castle, just at the dinner hour, 
and being invited to take a place at the table, did so, 
without for the moment adverting to the circum- 



* Letter to Gilbert Burns, Edinburg-h, 17th Dec. 1787. 

t (Extract from Journal.)— Thursday, Came over Cullo- 
den-Muir— reflections on the field of battle— breakfast at Kil- 
raick* — old Mrs. Rose — sterling- sense, warm heart, strong- 
passion, honest pride— all to an uncommon degree — a true 
chieftain's wife, daug-hter of Clephane — Mrs. Rose, jun., 
a little milder than the mother, perhaps owing- to her being- 
young-er— two young ladies— Miss Rose sung two Gaelic 
songs— beautiful and lovely— Miss Sodhy Brodie, not very 
beautiful, but most agreeable and amiable — both of them 
the gentlest, mildest, sXveetest creatures on earth, and happi- 
ness be with them ! Brodie-house to lie — Mr. B. truly polite, 
but not quite the Highland cordiality. — Friday, Cross the 
Findhorn to Forres— famous stone at Forres — Mr. Brodie 
tells me the muir where Shakspeare lays Macbeth's witch- 
meeting, is still haunted — that the country folks won't pass 
by night.— jEZg-tn — venerable ruins of the abbey, a grander 
effect at first glance than Melrose, but nothing near so beau- 
tiful. 

* Commonly spelt Kilravock, the seat of a very ancient family. 



172 LIFE OF 

Stance that his traveling companion had been 
left alone at the inn, in the adjacent village. On 
remembering this soon after dinner, he begged to 
be allowed to rejoin his friend ; and the Duke of 
Gordon, who now for the first time learned that he 
was not journeying alone, immediately proposed 
to send an invitation to Mr. NicoU, to come to the 
castle. His Grace's messenger found the haughty 
school-master striding up and down before the inn 
door, in a state of high wrath and indignation, at 
what he considered Burns' neglect, and no apolo- 
gies could soften his mood. He had already or- 
dered horses, and the poet finding that he must 
choose between the ducal circle and his irritable 
associate, at once left Gordon Castle, and re- 
paired to the inn ; whence NicoU and he, in silence 
and mutual displeasure, pursued their journey 
along the coast of the Murray Frith. This inci- 
dent may serve to suggest some of the annoy- 
ances to which persons moving, like our poet, on 
the debateable land between two different ranks 
of society, must ever be subjected. To play the 
lion under such circumstances, must be ditficult at 
the best ; but a delicate business, indeed, when 
the jackals are presumptuous. This pedant 
could not stomach the superior success of his 
friend — and yet, alas for poor human nature ! he 
certainly was one of the most enthusiastic of his 
admirers, and one of the most affectionate of all 
his intimates. The abridgment of Burns' visit at 
Gordon Castle, " was not only," says Mr. Walker, 
" a mortifying disappointment, but in all proba- 
bility a serious misfortune, as a longer stay 
among persons of such influence, might have 
begot a permanent intimacy, and on their parts, an 



ROBERT BURNS. 173 

active concern for his future advancement."* 
But this touches on a subject which we cannot at 
present pause to consider. 

A few days after leaving Fochabers, Burns 
transmitted to Gordon Castle his acknowledg- 
ment of the hospitality he had received from the 
noble family, in the stanzas — 

" Streams that glide on orient plains, 
Never bound by winter's chains," &c. 

The Duchess, on hearing them read, said she 
supposed they were Dr. Beattie's, and on learning 
whose they really were, expressed her wish that 
Burns had celebrated Gordon Castle in his own 
dialect. The verses are among the poorest of his 
productions. 

Pursuing his journey along the coast, the poet 
visited successively Nairn, Forres, Aberdeen, and 
Stonehive ; where one of his relations, James 
Burness, writer in Montrose, met him by appoint- 
ment, and conducted him into the circle of his 
paternal kindred, among whom he spent two or 
three days. When William Burness, his father, 
abandoned his native district, never to revisit it, 
he, as he used to tell his children, took a sorrow- 
ful farewell of his brother on the summit of the 
last hill from which the roof of their lowly home 
could be descried ; and the old man appears to 
have ever after kept up an affectionate correspond- 
ence with his family. It fell to the poet's lot to 
communicate his father's death to the Kincar- 
dineshire kindred, and after that he seems to 
have maintained the same sort of correspond- 
ence. He now formed a personal acquaintance 
with these good people, and in a letter to his bro- 
ther Gilbert, we find him describing them in 
* Morrison, vol. i. p. 80. 



174 LIFE OF 

terms which show the lively interest he took in 
all their concerns.* 

'' The rest of my stages," says he, " are not 
worth rehearsing : warm as I was from Ossian's 
country, where I had seen his very grave, what 
cared I for fishing towns and fertile carses ?" He 
arrived once more in Edinburgh, on the 16th of 
September, having traveled about six hundred 
miles in two-and-twenty days — greatly extended 
his acquaintance with his own country, and visited 
some of its most classical scenery — observed 
something of Highland manners, which must have 
been as interesting as they were novel to him — 
and strengthened considerably among the' sturdy 
jacobits of the North those political opinions 
which he at this period avowed. 

Of the few poems composed during this High- 
land tour, we have already mentioned two or 
three. While standing by the Fall of Fyers, 
near Loch Ness, he wrote with his pencil the 
vigorous couplets — 

" Among- the heathy hills and rugg-cd woods, 
The roaring- Fyers pours liis mossy floods," &c. 

When at Sir William Murray's of Ochtertyre, 
he celebrated Miss Murray of Lintrose, com- 
monly called " The Flower of Sutherland," in 
the song — 

"Blythe, blythe, and merry was she, 
Blythe was she but and ben," &c. 

And the verses On Scaring some Wildfowl on 

Loch Turit, — 

"Why, ye tenants of the lake, 

For me your wat'ry haunts forsake," &c., 

were composed while under the same roof. These 

* General Correspondence, No. 32. 



ROBERT BURNS, 175 

last, except perhaps Bruar Water, are the best 
that he added to his collection during the wander- 
ings of the summer. But in Burns' subsequent 
productions, we find many traces of the dehght 
with which he had contemplated nature in these 
alpine regions. 

The poet once more visited his family at Moss- 
giel, and Mr. Miller at Dalswinton, ere the winter 
set in ; and on more leisurely examination of that 
gentleman's estate, we find him writing as if he 
had all but decided to become his tenant on the 
farm of Elliesland. It was not, however, until he 
had for the third time visited Dumiries-shire, in 
March 1788, that a bargain was actually con- 
cluded. 

More than half of the intervening months were 
spent in Edinburgh, where Burns found or fancied 
that his presence was necessary for the satisfactory 
completion of his affairs with the booksellers. It 
seems to be clear enough that one great object was 
the society of his jovial intimates in the capital. 
Nor was he without the amusement of a little ro- 
mance to fill up what vacant hours they left him. 
He lodged that winter in Bristo street, on purpose 
to be near a beautiful widow — the same to whom 
he addressed the song. 

" Clarinda, mistress of my soul," &c. 
and a series of prose epistles, which have been se- 
parately published, and which present more in- 
stances of bad taste, bombastic language, and ful- 
some sentiment, than could be produced from all 
his writings besides. 

At this time the publication called Johnson^s 
Museum of Scottish Song was going on in Edin- 
burgh ; and the editor appears to have early pre- 
vailed on Burns to give him his assistance in the 
15 



176 LIFE OF 

arrangement of his materials. Though Green 
grow the rashes is the only song, entirely his, which 
appears in the first volume, published in 1787, 
many of the old ballads included in that volume 
bear traces of his hand ; but in the second volume, 
which appeared in March, 1788, we find no fewer 
than five songs by Burns ; two that have been al- 
ready mentioned,* and three far better than them, 
viz. Theniel Menzies' honny Mary; that grand 
lyric, 

" Farewell, ye dung-eons dark and strong-, 

The wretch's destiny, 
Macpherson's time will not be long 

On yonder g-allows tree ;" 

both of which performances bespeak the recent im- 
pressions of his Highland visit ; and, lastly. Whis- 
tle and ril come to you, my lad. Burns had been 
from his youth upwards an enthusiastic lover of the 
old minstrelsy and music of his country ; but he 
now studied both subjects with far better oppor- 
tunities and appliances than he could have com- 
manded previously ; and it is from this time that 
we must date his ambition to transmit his own 
poetry to posterity, in eternal association with 
those exquisite airs which had hitherto, in far too 
many instances, been married to verses that did 
not deserve to be immortal. It is well known 
that from this time Burns composed very few 
pieces but songs ; and whether we ought or not to 
regret that such was the case, must depend on the 
estimate we make of his songs as compared with 
his other poems ; a point on which critics are to 
this hour divided, and on which their descendants 

* " Clarinda," and " How pleasant the banks of the clear 
winding Devon." 



ROBERT BURNS. 177 

are not very likely to agree. Mr. Walker, who is 
one of those that lament Burns' comparative de- 
reliction of the species of composition which he 
most cultivated in the early days of his inspiration, 
suggests very sensibly, that if Burns had not taken 
to song-writing, he would probably have written 
httle or nothing amidst the various temptations to 
company and dissipation which now and hence- 
forth surrounded him — to say nothing of the active 
duties of life in which he was at length about to 
be eno-ag-ed. 

Burns was present, on the 31st of December, at 
a dinner to celebrate the birth-day of the unfortu- 
nate Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and produced 
on the occasion an ode, part of which Dr. Currie 
has preserved. The specimen will not induce 
any regret that the remainder of the piece has 
been suppressed. It appears to be a mouthing 
rhapsody — far, far different indeed from the Che- 
valier^s Lament, which the poet composed some 
months afterwards, with probably the tithe of the 
effort, while riding alone " through a track of 
melancholy muirs between Galloway and Ayr- 
shire, it being Sunday."* 

For six weeks of the time that Burns spent this 
year in Edinburgh, he was confined to his room, in 
consequence of an overturn in a hackney coach. 
*' Here I am," he writes, " under the care of a 
surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a cu- 
shion, and the tints of my mind vying with the li- 
vid horrors preceding a midnight thunder-storm. 
A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, 
and incomparably the lightest evil ; misfortune, 
bodily constitution, hell, and myself, have formed 

* General CorrcspoudencOj No. 46, 



178 LIFE OF 

a quadruple alliance to guaranty the other. I 
have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got 
half way through the five books of Moses, and 
halfway in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. 
I sent for my bookbinder to-day, and ordered him 
to get an 8vo Bible in sheets, the best paper and 
print in town, and bind it with all the elegance of 
his craft."* 

In another letter, which opens gayly enough, we 
find him reverting to the same prevailing darkness 
of mood. " I can't say I am altogether at my ease 
when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, 
squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty, attended as 
he always is by iron-fisted Oppression, and leer- 
ing Contempt. But I have sturdily withstood his 
buffetmgs many a hard-labored day, and still my 
motto is / DARE. My worst enemy is moi-meme. 
There are just two creatures that I would envy — 
a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of 
Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of 
Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoy- 
ment ; the other has neither wish nor fear."f 

One more specimen of this magnificant hypo- 
chondriacism may be sufficient.:]: " These have 
been six horrible weeks. Anguish and low spirits 
have made me unfit to read, write, or think. I have 
a hundred times wished that one could resign life as 
an officer does a commission ; for I Avould not take 
in any poor ignorant wretch by selling out. Late- 
ly, I was a sixpenny private, and God knows a mi- 
serable soldier enough : now 1 march to the cam- 
paign a starving cadet, a little more conspicuously 
wretched. I am ashamed of all this ; for though 
I do not want bravery for the warfare of life, I 

* Reliques, p. 43. t Ibid. p. 44. 

t General Correspondence, No. 43. 



ROBERT BURNS. 179 

could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as 
much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or con- 
ceal my cowardice." 

It seems impossible to doubt that Burns had 
in fact lingered in Edinburgh, in the hope that, 
to use a vague but sufficiently expressive phrase, 
something would be done for him. He visited and 
revisited a farm, — talked and v/rote scholarly and 
wisely about " having a fortune at the plough-tail," 
and so forth ; but all the while nourished, and as- 
suredly it would have been most strange if he had 
not, the fond dream that the admiration of his 
country would ere long present itself in some solid 
and tangible shape. His illness and confinement 
gave him leisure to concentrate his imagination 
on the darker side of his prospects ; and the letters 
which we have quoted may teach those vvho envy 
the powers and the fame of genius, to pause for a 
moment over the annals of literature, and think 
what superior capabilities of misery have been, in 
\he great majority of cases, interwoven with the 
possession of those very talents, from which all but 
their possessors derive unmingled gratification. 

Burns' distresses, however, were to be still far- 
ther aggravated. While still under the hands of 
his surgeon, he received inteUigencefrom Mauch- 
line that his intimacy with Jean Armour had once 
more exposed her to the reproaches of her family. 
The father sternly and at once turned her out of 
doors ; and Burns, unable to walk across his room, 
had to write to his friends in Mauchline, to pro- 
cure shelter for his children, and for her whom he 
considered as — all but his wife. In a letter to Mrs. 
Dunlop, written on hearing of this new misfortune, 
he says, " '/ wish I were dead, but Fm no like to 
die.' I fear I am something like — undone ; but I 
15* 



IWU LIFE OF 

hope for the best. You must not desert me. Your 
friendship I think I can count on, though I should 
date my letters from a marching regiment. Early 
in life, and all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting 
drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously, though, life 
at present presents me v/hh but a melancholy 

path But my limb will soon be sound, and I 

shall struggle on."* 

It seems to have been now that Burns at last 
screwed up his courage to solicit the active inter- 
ference in his behalf of the Earl of Glencairn. The 
letter is a brief one. Burns could ill endure this 
novel attitude, and he rushed at once to his re- 
quest. " I wish," says he, " to get into the ex- 
cise. I am told your lordship will easily procure 
me the grant from the commissioners ; and your 
lordship's patronage and kindness, which have al- 
ready rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness, 
and exile, embolden me to ask that interest. You 
have likewise put in my power to save the little 
tie of home, that sheltered an aged mother, two 
brothers, and three sisters from destruction. 
There, my lord, you have bound me over to the 

highest gratitude. My heart sinks within me 

at the idea of applying to any other of The Great 
who have honored me with their countenance. I 
am ill qualified to dog the heels of greatness with 
the impertinence of solicitation ; and tremble 
nearly as much at the thought of the cold promise 
as of the cold denial. "f 

It would be hard to think that this letter was 
coldly or negligently received ; on the contrary, 
we know that Burns' gratitude to Lord Glen- 
cairn lasted as long as his hfe. But the excise ap- 

* Reliques, p. 48. 

t Genei-al Correspondence jNo. 40. 



EGBERT BURNS. 181 

pointment which he coveted was not procured by 
any exertion of his noble patron's influence. Mr. 
Alexander Wood, surgeon, (still affectionately re- 
membered in Scotland as " kind old Sandy Wood,") 
happening to hear Burns, while his patient, men- 
tion the object of his wishes, went immediately, 
without dropping any hint of his intention, and 
communicated the state of the poet's case to Mr. 
Graham of Fintray, one of the commissioners of 
excise, who had met Burns at the Duke of Athole's 
in the autumn, and who immediately had the poet's 
name put on the roll. 

1 have chosen this, my dear friend, (thus wrote 
Burns to Mrs. Dunlop,) after mature deHberation. 
The question is not at what door of Fortune's pa- 
lace shall we enter in ; but what doors does she 
open to us ? I was not likely to get any thing to 
do. I wanted un hut, which is a dangerous, an un- 
happy situation. I got this without any hanging on 
or mortifying solicitation. It is immediate bread, 
and, though poor in comparison of the last eighteen 
months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison 
of all my preceding life. Besides, the commission- 
ers are some of them my acquaintances, and all of 
them my firm friends. ^''^ 

Our poet seems to have kept up an angry cor- 
respondence during his confinement with his book- 
seller, Mr. Creech, whom he also abuses very 
heartily in his letters to his friends in Ayrshire. 
The publisher's accounts, however, when they were 
at last made up, must have given the impatient 
author a very agreeable surprise ; for, in his letter 
above quoted, to Lord Glencairn, we find him ex- 
pressing his hopesthat the grossprofits of his book 
might amount to " better than £200," whereas, 
* Reliqucs, p. 50. 



18i LIFE OF 

on the day of settling with Mr. Creech, he found 
himself in possession of JS500, if not of £600.* 

This supply cametruly in the hourofneed; and 
it seems to have elevated his spirits greatly, and 
given him for the time a new stock of confidence ; 
for he now resumed immediately his purpose of 
taking Mr. Miller's farm, retaining his excise com- 
mission in his pocket as a dernier resort, to be 
made use of only should some reverse of fortune 
come upon him. His first act, however, was to re- 
lieve his brother from his difficulties, by advancing 
o£180, or £20.0, to assist him in the management 
of Mossgiel. " T give myself no airs on this," he 
generously says, in a letter to Dr. Moore, " for it 
was mere selfishness on my part. 1 was conscious 
that the wrong scale of the balance was pretty 
heavily charged, and 1 thought that the throwing 
a little filial piety and fraternal affection into the 
scale in my favor, might help to smooth matters 
at the grand reckoning. ^^-\ 

* Mr. NicoU, the most intimate friend Burns had at this 
time, writes to Mr. John Lewars, excise officer, at Dumfries, 
immediately on hearing" of tlie poet's death, — ' He certainly 
told me that he received £600, for the first Edinburgh 
edition, and £100 afterwards for the copyright,' (MS. in 
my possession.) Dr. Currie states the gross product of 
Creech's edition at £500, and Burns himself, in one of his 
printed letters, at £400 only. NicoU hints, in the letter 
already referred to, that Burns had contracted debts while 
in Edinburgh, which he might not wish to avow on all oc- 
casions ; and if we are to believe this, and, as is probable, 
tlie expense of printing the subscription edition, should, 
moreover, be deducted from the £700 stated by Mr. Nicoll 
— the appaijent contradictions in these stories may be pretty 
nearly reconciled. — There appears to be reason for thinking 
that Creech subsequently paid more than £100 for the copy- 
right. If he did not, how came Burns to realize, as Currie 
states it at the end of his Memoir, "nearly nine hundred 
pounds in all by his poems?" 

1 General Correspondence, No. 66. 



ROBERT BURNS. 183 



CHAPTER VII. 



«' To make a happy fireside clime 
For weans and wife — 

That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 

Burns, as soon as his bruised limb was able 
for a journey, went to Mossgiel, and went through 
the ceremony of a Justice-of-Peace marriage with 
Jean Armour, in the writing-chambers of his friend 
Gavin Hamilton. He then crossed the country to 
Dalswinton, and concluded his bargain with Mr. 
Miller as to the farm on EUiesland, on terms which 
must undoubtedly have been considered by both 
parties, as highly favorable to the poet ; they were 
indeed fixed by two of Burns' own friends, who 
accompanied him for that purpose from Ayrshire. 
The lease was for four successive terms, of nineteen 
years each, — in all seventy-six years ; the rent for 
the first three years and crops fifty pounds ; during 
the remainder of the period £70. Mr. Miller 
bound himself to defray the expense of any plan- 
tations which Burns might please to make on the 
banks of the river ; and, the farm-house and ofiices 
being in a dilapidated condition, the new tenant 
was to recieve £300, from the proprietor, for the 
erection of suitable buildings. " The land," says 
Allan Cunningham, " was good, the rent mode- 
rate and the markets were rising." 

Burns entered on possession of his farm at Whit- 
suntide, 1788, but the necessary rebuilding of the 
house prevented his removing Mrs. Burns thither 



184 LIFE OF 

until the season was far advanced. He had, more- 
over, to quaUfy himself for holding his excise com- 
mission hy six week's attendance on the business 
of that profession at Ayr. From these circum- 
stances, he led all the summer a wandering andun- 
settled life, and Dr. Currie mentions this as one of 
his chief misfortunes. The poet, as he says, was 
continually riding between Ayrshire and Dum- 
fries-shire, and often spending a night on the road, 
" sometimes fell into company, and forgot the re- 
solutions he had formed." 

What these resolutions were, the poet himself 
shall tell us. On the 3d day of his residence at 
Elliesland, he thus writes to Mr. Ainslie: " I have 
all along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred 
to arms, among the light-horse, the piquet guards 
of fancy, a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the 
brain ; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these 
giddy battalions. Cost what it will, I am deter- 
mined to buy in among the grave squadrons of 
heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plod- 
ding contrivance. — Were it not for the terrors of 
my ticklish situation respecting a family of chil- 
dren, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I 
have taken is vastly for my happiness."* 

To all his friends, he expresses himself in terms 
of similar satisfaction in regard to his marriage. 
" Your surmise, madam," he writes to Mrs. Dun- 
lop, "is just. I am indeed a husband. I found 
a once much-loved, and still much-loved female, 
literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the 
naked elements, but as I enabled her to purchase 
a shelter ; and there is no sporting with a fellow- 
creature's happiness or misery. The most placid 

* Reliques, p. 63. 



ROBERT BURNS. 185 

good nature and sweetness of disposition ; a warm 
heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to 
love me ; vigorous health and sprightly cheerful- 
ness, set off to the best advantage by a more than 
commonly handsome figure ; these, I think, in a 
woman, may make a good wife, though she should 
never have read a page but the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament, nor danced in a brighter 

assembly than a penny-pay wedding To 

jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger ; my 
preservative from the first, is the most thorough 
consciousness of her sentiments of honor, and her 
attachment to me ; my antidote against the last, 
is my long and deep-rooted affection for her. In 
housewife matters, of aptness to learn, and activi- 
ty to execute, she is eminently mistress, and du- 
ring my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and 
constantly an apprentice to my mother and sisters 

in their dairy, and other rural business 

You are right, that a bachelor state would have 
insured me more friends ; but from a cause you 
will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoy- 
ment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confi- 
dence in approaching my God, would seldom have 
been of the number."* 

Some months later he tells Miss Chalmers that 
his marriage " was not, perhaps, in consequence 
of the attachment of romance," — (he is address- 
ing a young lady,) — " but," he continues, "I have 
no cause to repent it. If X have not got polite 
tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I 
am not sickened and disgusted with the multi- 
form curse of boarding-school affectation ; and I 

* Sec General Correspondence, No. 53 ; and Reliques, 
pag-e 60. 



186 LIFE OF 

have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest tem- 
per, the soundest constitution, and the kindest 
heart in the country. Mrs. Burns believes as 
firmly as her creed, that I am le plus hel esprit et 
le plus honnete homme in the universe ; although 
she scarcely ever, in her life, except the Scrip- 
tures and the Psalms of David in Metre, spent 
five minutes together on either prose or verse — I 
must except also a certain late publication of 
Scots poems, which she has perused very devout- 
ly, and all the ballads of the country, as she has 
(O the partial lover, you will say) the finest 
woodnote-wild I ever heard."* 

It was during this honeymoon, as he calls it, 
while chiefly residentinamiserablehovel at Ellies- 
land,-|- and only occasionally spending a day or 
two in Ayrshire, that he wrote the beautiful song: J 

" Of a' the airs the wind can blaw I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, the lassie I lo'e best ; 
There wildwoods grow, and rivers row, and many a hill be- 
tween ; 
But day and nig-ht my fancy's flight is ever wi' my Jean. 

O blaw, ye westlin winds, blaw saft amang the leafy trees, 
Wi' gentle gale, frae muir and dale, bring hame the laden 

bees. 
And bring the lassie back to me, that's aye sae neat and 

clean ; 
, Ae blink o' her wad banish care, sae lovely is my Jean." 

"A discerning reader," says Mr. Walker, "will 

* One of Burns' letters, written not long after this, con- 
tains a passage strongly marked with his haughtiness of cha- 
racter. " I have escaped," says he, "the fantastic caprice, 
the apish affectation, with all the other blessed boarding- 
school acquirements which are sometimes to be found among 
females of the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade 
the misses of the would-be gentry."— General Correspon- 
dence. No. 55. 

t Reliques, p. 75. t Ibid. p. 273. 



ROBERT BURNS. 187 

perceive that the letters in which he announces 
his marriage to some of his most respected corre- 
spondents, are written in that state when the mind 
is pained by reflecting on an unwelcome step, 
and finds relief to itself in seeking arguments to 
justify the deed, and lessen its disadvantages in 
the opinion of others."* I confess I am not able 
to discern any traces of this kind of feeling in any 
of Burns' letters on this interesting and impor- 
tant occasion. Mr. Walker seems to take it for 
granted, that because Burns admired the superior 
manners and accomplishments of women of the 
higher ranks of society, he must necessarily, 
whenever he discovered ^* the interest which he 
had the power of creating" in such persons, have 
aspired to find a wife among them. But it is, to 
say the least of the matter, extremely doubtful, 
that Burns, if he had had a mind, could have 
found any high-born maiden willing to partake 
such fortunes as his were likely to be, and yet pos- 
sessed of such qualifications for making him a 
happy man, as he had ready for his acceptance in 
his " Bonny Jean." The proud heart of the poet 
could never have stooped itself to woo for gold ; 
and birth and high-breeding could only have been 
introduced into a farm-house to embitter, in the 
upshot, the whole existence of its inmates. It is 
very easy to say, that had Burns married an ac- 
complished woman, he might have found domestic 
evenings sufficient to satisfy all the cravings of his 
mind — abandoned tavern haunts and jollities for 
ever — and settled down into a regular pattern- 
character. But it is at least as possible, that con- 
sequences of an exactly opposite nature might 

* Morrison, vol. i. p. Ixxxvii. 
16 



188 LIFE OF 

have ensued. Any marriage, such as Professor 
Walker alludes to, would, in his case, have been 
more unequal, than either of those that made 
Dryden and Addison miserable for life. 

Sir Waiter Scott, in his life of the former of 
these great men, has well described the difficult 
situation of her, who has '' to endure the appa- 
rently causeless fluctuation of spirits incident to 
one doomed to labor incessantly in the feverish 
exercise of the imagination." — " Unintentional 
neglect," says he, " and the inevitable relaxa- 
tion, or rather sinking of spirit, which follows 
violent mental exertion, are easily misconstrued 
into capricious rudeness, or intentional offense ; 
and life is embittered by mutual accusation, not 
the less intolerable because reciprocally unjust."* 
Such were the difficulties under which the do- 
mestic peace both of Addison and Dryden went 
to wreck ; and yet, to say nothing of manners 
and habits of the highest elegance and polish in 
either case, they were both of them men of strict- 
ly pure and correct conduct in their conjugal ca- 
pacities ; and who can doubt that all these diffi- 
culties must have been enhanced tenfold, had any 
woman of superior condition linked her fortunes 
with Robert Burns, a man at once of the very 
warmest animal temperament, and the most way- 
ward and moody of all his melancholy and irritable 
tribe, who had little vanity that could have been 
gratified by a species of connection, which, unless 
he had found a human angel, must have been con- 
tinually wounding his pride? But, in truth, these 
speculations are all worse than worthless. Burns, 
with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spi- 
rited man, and he loved the mother of his chil- 

*Lifeof Diydeii, p. 90, 



ROBERT BURNS. 189 

drcn ; ami had he hesitated to make her his wife, 
he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruf- 
fian, or that misery of miseries, the remorse of a 
poet. 

The Reverend Hamilton Paul takes an origi- 
nal view of this business : " Much praise," says 
he, "has been lavished on Burns for renewing his 
engagement with Jean when in the blaze of his 
fame. . . . The praise is misplaced. We do not 
think a man entitled to credit or commendation 
for doing what the law could compel him to per- 
form. Burns was in reality a married man, and it 
is truly ludicrous to hear him, aware as he must 
have been, of the indissoluble power of the obli- 
gation, though every document was destroyed, 
talking of himself as a bachelor."* There is no 
justice in these remarks. It is very true, that, by 
a merciful fiction of the law of Scotland, the fe- 
male, in Miss Armour's condition, who produces 
a written promise of marriage, is considered as 
having furnished evidence of an irregular mar- 
riage having taken place between her and her 
lover ; but in this case the female herself had de- 
stroyed the document, and lived for many months 
not only not assuming, but rejecting, the charac- 
ter of Burns' wife; and had she, under such cir- 
cumstances, attempted to establish a marriage, 
with no document in her hand, and with no parole 
evidence to show that any such document had ever 
existed, to say nothing of proving its exact tenor, 
but that of her own father, it is clear that no eccle- 
siastical court in the world could have failed to de- 
cide against her. So far from Burns having all 
along regarded her as his wife, it is extremely 

* Paul's Life of Burns, p. 45. 



190 LIFE OF 

doubtful whether she had ever for one moment 
considered him as actually her husband, until he 
declared the marriage of 1788. Burns did no 
more than justice as well as honor demanded ; but 
the act was one which no human tribunal could 
have compelled him to perform. 

To return to our story. Burns complains sadly 
of his solitary condition, when living in the only 
hovel that he found extant on his farm. " I am," 
says he (September 9th) " busy with my harvest, 
but for all that most pleasurable part of life called 
social intercourse, I am here at the very elbow of 
existence. The only things that are to be found 
in this country in any degree of perfection, are 
stupidity, and canting. Prose they only know in 
graces, &;c., and the value of these they estimate 
as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for 
the muses, they have as much idea of a rhinoce- 
ros as of a poet."* And in another letter (Sep- 
tember 16) he says, " This hovel that I shelter in 
while occasionally here, is pervious to every blast 
that blows, and every shower that falls, and I am 
only preserved from being chilled to death by 
being suffocated by smoke. You will be pleased 
to hear that I have laid aside idle eclat, and bind 
every day after my reapers. "f 

His house, however, did not take much time in 
building ; nor had he reason to complain of want 
of society long; nor, it must be added, did Burns 
bind every day after his reapers. 

He brought his wife home to Elliesland about 
the end of November ; and few housekeepers start 
with a larger provision of young mouths to feed 
than this couple. Mrs. Burns had lain in this au- 
tumn, for the second time, of twins, and I suppose 

* Reliqucs, p. 75. t lb. p. 79. 



ROBERT BURIN'S. 191 

" sonsy, smirking, dear-bought Bess,"* accompa- 
nied her younger brothers and sisters from Moss- 
giel. From that quarter also Burns brought a 
whole estabhshment of servants, male and female, 
who, of course, as was then the universal custom 
amongst the small farmers, both of the west and 
of the south of Scotland, partook, at the same ta- 
ble, of the same fare with theirmaster and mistress. 
Elliesland is beautifully situated on the banks of 
the Nith, about six miles above Dumfries, exact- 
ly opposite to the house of Dalswinton, of those 
noble woods and gardens amidst which Burns' 
landlord, the ingenious Mr. Patrick Miller, found 
relaxation from the scientific studies and research- 
es, in which he so greatly excelled. On the Dal- 
swinton side, the river washes lawns and groves ; 
but over against these the bank rises into a long 
red scaur, of considerable height, along the verge 
of which, where the bare shingle of the precipice 
all but overhangs the stream.. Burns had his fa- 
vorite walk, and might now be seen striding 
alone, early and late, especially v.-hen the winds 
were loud, and the waters below him swollen and 
turbulent. For he was one of those that enjoy 
nature most in the more serious and severe of her 
aspects ; and throughout his poetry, for one allu- 
sion to the liveliness of spring, or the splendor of 
summer, it would be easy to point out twenty in 
which he records the solemn delight with which 
he contemplated the melancholy grandeur of au- 
tumn, or the savage gloom of winter. Indeed, I 
cannot but think that the result of an exact inqui- 
ry into the composition of Burns' poems, would 
be, that " his vein," like that of Milton, " flowed 
most happily, from the autumnal equinox to the 

* Poetical Inventory to Mr. Aiken, February, 178G. 
10* 



192 LIFE OF 

vernal." Of Lord Byron, we know that his vein 
flowed best at midnight ; and Burns has himself 
told us that it was his custom " to take a gloamin' 
shot at the muses." 

The poet was accustomed to say, that the most 
happy period of his life was the first winter he 
spent atElIiesland, — for the first time under a roof 
of his own — with his wife and children about him 
— and in spite of occasional lapses into melan- 
choly which had haunted his youth, looking for- 
ward to a life of well-regulated, and not ill-re- 
warded, industry. It is known that he welcomed 
his wife to her rooftree at EUiesland in the song, 

"I hae a wife o' mine ain, I'll partake wi' naebody ; 
I'll tak cuckold frae nane, I'll gie cuckold to naebody ; 
I hae a penny to spend — there— thanks to naebody ; 
I hae naething- to lend — I'll borrow frae naebody." 

In commenting on this " little lively lucky song," 
as he well calls it, Mr. Allan Cunningham says, 
*' Burns had built his house, he had committed his 
seed-corn to the ground, he was in the prime, nay 
the morning of life — health, and strength, and 
agricultural skill (?) were on his side — his genius 
had been acknowledged by his country, and re- 
warded by a subscription, more extensive than 
any Scottish poet ever received before ; no won- 
der, therefore, that he broke^'out into voluntary 
song, expressive of his sense of importance and 
independence."* — Another songwas composed in 
honor of Mrs. Burns, during the happy weeks that 
followed her arrival at EUiesland : 

'' O, were I on Parnassus hill, 
Or had of Helicon my fill, 
That I might catch poetic skill, 
To sing how dear I love thee ! 

♦ Cunning-ham's Scottish Song-s. vol. iv., p. P6, 



ROBERT BURNS. 193 

But Nith maun be my muse's well, 

My muse maun be thy bonny sell, 

On Corsincon I'll g-lower and spell, 

And write how dear I love thee." 

In the second stanza, the poet rather transgresses 
the limits of connubial decorum ; but, on the 
whole, these tributes to domestic affection are 
among the last of his performances that one 
would wish to lose. 

Burns, in his letters of the year 1789, makes 
many apologies for doing but little in his poetical 
vocation ; his farm, without doubt, occupied much 
of his attention, but the want of social intercourse, 
of which he complained on his first arrival in 
Nithsdale, had by this time totally disappeared. 
On the contrary, his company was courted ea- 
gerly, not only by his brother farmers, but by the 
neighboring gentry of all classes ; and nov/, too, 
for the first time, he began to be visited continu- 
ally in his own house by curious travelers of all 
sorts, who did not consider, any more than the 
generous poet himself, that an extensive practice 
of hospitality must cost more time than he ought 
to have had, and far more money than he ever 
had, at his disposal. Meantime, he was not 
wholly regardless of the muses ; for in addition 
to some pieces which we have already had occa- 
sion to notice, he fbntributed to this year's Mu- 
seum, The Thames jiows 'proudly to the Sea ; The 
lazy mist hangs, <^c. ; The day returns, my bosom 
burns ; Tarn Glen, (one of the best of his hu- 
morous songs ;) the splendid lyric, Go fetch to 
me a "pint of wine, and My heart ^s in the Hielands, 
(in both of which, however, he adopted some 
lines of ancient songs to the same tunes ;) John 
Anderson, in part also a rifacciamento ; the best 
of all his Bacchanalian pieces, Willie brewed a 



194 LIFE OF 

peck o' maut, written in celebration of a festive 
meeting at the country residence, in Dumfries- 
shire, of his friend Mr. Nicoli of the high-school ; 
and lastly, that noblest of all his ballads. To Mary 
in Heaven. 

This celebrated poem was, it is on all hands ad- 
mitted, composed by Burns in September, 1789, 
on the anniversary of the day on which he heard 
of the death of his early love, Mary Campbell ; 
but Mr. Cromek has thought fit to dress up the 
story with circumstances which did not occur. 
Mrs. Burns, the only person who could appeal to 
personal recollection on this occasion, and whose 
recollections of all circumstances connected with 
the history of her husband's poems, are represented 
as being remarkably distinct and vivid, gives what 
may at first appear a more prosaic edition of the 
history.* According to her, Burns spent that day, 
though laboring under cold, in the usual work of 
his harvest, and apparently in excellent spirits. 
But as the twilight deepened, he appeared to 
grow " very sad about something," and at length 
wandered out into the barn-yard, to which his 
wife, in her anxiety for his health, followed him, 
entreating him in vain to observe that frost had 
set in, and to return to the fireside. On being 
again and again requested tb do so, he always 
promised compliance — but still remained where 
he was, striding up and down slowly, and 
contemplating the sky, which was singularly 
clear and starry. At last Mrs. Burns found 
him stretched on a mass of straw, with his eyes 
fixed on a beautiful planet "that shone like 

* I owe these particulars to Mr. M'Diarmid, the able editor 
of the Dumfries Courier, and brother of the lamented au- 
thor of " Lives of British Statesmen." 



ROBERT BURNS. 195 

another moon ;" and prevailed on him to come in. 
He immediately on entering the house, called for 
his desk, and wrote exactly as they now stand, 
with all the ease of one copying from memory, 
the sublime and pathetic verses — 

" Thou ling-ering star with lessening- ray, 

That lovest to greet the early morn, 
Ag-ain thou usher'st in the day 

My Mary froni my soul was torn. 
O Mary, dear departed shade, 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ; 
See's t thou thy lover lowly laid, 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast 1" &c. 

The Mother^ s Lament for her Son, and Inscrip- 
tion in a Hermitage in JSithsdale, were also writ- 
ten this year. 

From the time when Burns settled himself in 
Dumfries-shire, he appears to have conducted with 
much care the extensive correspondence in which 
his celebrity had engaged him ; it is, however, 
very necessary in judging of these letters, and 
drawing inferences from their language as to the 
real sentiments and opinions of the writer, to take 
into consideration the rank and character of the 
persons to whom they are severally addressed, and 
the measure of intimacy which really subsisted 
between them and the poet. In his letteTS, as in 
his conversation, Burns, in spite of all his pride, 
did something to accommodate himself to his 
company ; and he who did write the series of 
letters addressed to Mrs. Dumlop, Dr. Moore, Mr. 
Dugald Stewart, Miss Chalmers, and others, emi- 
nently distinguished as these are by purity and 
nobleness of feeling and perfect propriety of lan- 
guage, presents himself, in other effusions of the 



196 LIFE OF 

same class, in colors which it would be rasli to 
call his own. In a word, whatever of grossness of 
thought, or rant, extravagance, and fustian in ex- 
pression, may be found in his correspondence, 
ought, I cannot doubt, to be mainly ascribed to 
his desire of accommodating himself for the mo- 
ment to the habits and taste of certain buckish 
tradesmen of Edinburgh, and other suchlike per- 
sons, whom, from circumstances already sufficient- 
ly noticed, he numbered among his associates and 
friends. That he should have condescended to any 
such compliances must be regretted ; but in most 
cases, it would probably be quite unjust to push 
our censure further than this. 

The letters that passed between him and his 
brother Gilbert, are among the most precious of 
the collection; for there there could be no disguise. 
That the brothers had entire knowledge of and 
confidence in each other, no one can doubt ; and 
the plain, manly, affectionate language in which 
they both write, is truly honorable to them, and 
to the parents that reared them. 

"Dear Brother," writes Gilbert, January 1, 
1789, " I have just finished my new-year's day 
breakfast in the usual form, which naturally makes 
me call to mind the days of former years, and the 
society in which we used to begin them ; and 
when I look at our family vicissitudes, ' through 
the dark postern of time long elapsed,' I cannot 
help remarking to you, my dear brother, how 
good the God of seasons is to us ; and that, how- 
ever some clouds may seem to lour over the por- 
tion of time before us, we have great reason to 
hope that all will turn out well." 

It was on the same new-year's day, that Burns 
himself addressed to Mrs. Dunlop a letter, part of 



ROBERT BURNS. 197 

which is here transcribed — it certainly cannot be 
read too often. 

" Elliesland, New- Year-Day Morning, 1789. 

*' This, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes, 
and would to God that I came under the apostle 
James' description ! — the irrayer of a righteous 
man availeth much. In that case, madam, you 
should welcome in a year full of blessings ; every 
thing that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and 
self-enjoyment, should be removed, and every 
pleasure that frail humanity can taste, should be 
yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that 
I approve of set times and seasons of more than 
ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that 
habituated routine of life and thought, which is 
so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, 
or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a 
state very little superior to mere machinery. 

" This day, — The first Sunday of May, — a 
breezy blue-skyed noon sometimes about the be- 
ginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny 
day about the end of autumn ; these, time out of 
mind, have been with me a kind of holiday. 

" I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in 
the Spectator, ' The Vision of Mirza ;' a piece 
that struck my young fancy before I was capa- 
ble of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables : 
' On the 5th day of the moon, which, according 
to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep 
holy, after having washed myself, and oflfered up 
my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill 
of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in 
meditation and prayer.' 

"We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the 
substance or structure of our souls, so cannot ac- 
count for those seeming caprices in them, that one 



198 LIFE OF 

should be particularly pleased with this thing, or 
struck with that, which, on minds of a different 
cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have 
some favorite flowers in spring, among which are 
the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, 
the wild brier-rose, the budding-birch, and the 
hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with 
particular dehght. I never hear the loud, solitary 
whistle of the curlew, in a summer noon, or the 
wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover, in 
an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation 
of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. 
Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be ow- 
ing ? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like 
the ^olian harp, passive, takes the'impression of 
the passing accident ? Or do these workings argue 
something within us above the trodden clod ? I 
own myself partial to such proofs of those awful 
and important realities — a God that made all 
things — man's immaterial and immortal nature — 
and a world of weal or wo beyond death and the 
grave." 

Few, it is to be hoped, can read such things as 
these without delight ; none, surely, that taste the 
elevated pleasure they are calculated to inspire, 
can turn from them to the well-known issue of 
Burns' history, without being afllicted. It is dif- 
ficult to imagine any thing more beautiful, more 
noble, than what such a person as Mrs. Dunlop 
might at this period be supposed to contemplate 
as the probable tenor of his future life. What 
fame can bring of happiness he had already tasted; 
he had overleaped, by the force of his genius, all 
the painful barriers of society ; and there was pro- 
bably not a man in Scotland who would not have 
thought himself honored by seeing Burns under 
his roof. He had it in his own power to place 



nOBERT BURNS. 199 

his poetical reputation on a level with the very 
highest names, by proceeding in the same course 
of study and exertion which had originally raised 
him into public notice and admiration. Surrounded 
by an attectionate family, occupied but not en- 
grossed by the agricultural labors in which his 
youth and early manhood had delighted, com, 
muning with nature in one of the loveliest districts 
of his native land, and, from time to time, pro- 
ducing to the world some immortal addition to 
his verse, — thus advancing in years and in fame, 
with what respect would not Burns have been 
thought of; how venerable in the eyes of his con- 
temporaries—how hallowed in those of after ge- 
nerations, would have been the roof of EUiesland, 
the field on which he " bound every day after his 
reapers," the solemn river by which he delighted 
to wander ! The plain of Bannockburn would 
hardly have been holier ground. 

The "golden days" of EUiesland, as Dr. Currie 
justly calls them, were not destined to be many. 
Burns' farming speculations once more failed ; 
and he himself seems to have been aware that 
such was likely to be the case ere he had given 
the business many months' trial ; for, ere the au- 
tumn of 1788 was over, he applied to his patron, 
Mr. Graham of Fintray, for actual employment 
as an exciseman, and was accordingly appointed 
to do duty, in that capacity, in the district where 
his lands were situated. His income, as a revenue 
officer, was at first only £35 ; it by and by rose 
to £50 ; and sometimes was £70. 

These pounds were hardly earned, since the 
duties of his new calhng necessarily withdrew him 
very often from the farm, which needed his ut- 
most attention, and exposed him, which was still 
17 



200 LIFE OF 

worse, to innumerable temptations of the kind he 
was least likely to resist. 

I have now the satisfaction of presenting the 
reader with some particulars of this part of Burns' 
history, derived from a source which every lover 
of Scotland and Scottish poetry must be prepared 
to hear mentioned with respect. It happened that 
at the time when our poet went to Nithsdale, the 
father of Mr. Allan Cunningham was steward on 
the estate of Dalswinton : he was, as all who have 
read the writings of his sons will readily believe, 
a man of remarkable talents and attainments : he 
was a wise and good man ; a devout admirer of 
Burns' genius ; and one of those sober neighbors 
who in vain strove, by advice and warning, to ar- 
rest the poet in the downhill path, towards which 
a thousand seductions were perpetually drawing 
him. Mr. Allan Cunningham was, of course, al- 
most a child when he first saw Burns ; but he 
was no common child ; and, besides, in what he 
has to say on this subject, we may be sure we are 
hearing the substance of his benevolent and saga- 
cious father's observations and reflections. His 
own boyish recollections of the poet's personal 
appearance and demeanor will, however, be read 
with interest. 

" I was very young," says Allan Cunningham, 
" when I first saw Burns. He came to see my 
father ; and their conversation turned partly on 
farming, partly on poetry, in both of which my 
father had taste and skill. Burns had just come 
to Nithsdale ; and I think he appeared a shade 
more swarthy than he does in Nasmyth's picture, 
and at least ten years older than he really was at 
the time. His face was deeply marked by thought, 
and the habitual expression intensely melancholy. 
His frame was very muscular and well proper- 



ROBERT BURNS. 201 

lioned, though he had a short neck, and something 
of a ploughman's stoop : he was strong, and proud 
of his strength- I saw him one evening match 
himself with a number of masons ; and out of five 
and twenty practiced hands, the most vigorous 
young men in the parish, there was only one that 
could lift the same weight as Burns. 

"He had a very manly face, and a very melan- 
choly look ; but on the coming of those he esteem- 
ed, his looks brightened up, and his whole face 
beamed with affection and genius. His voice was 
very musical. I once heard him read Tarn 6* 
Shanter. I think I hear him now. His fine man- 
ly voice followed all the undulations of the sense, 
and expressed as well as his genius had done the 
pathos and humor, the horrible and the awfu *^f 
that wonderful performance. As a man feels 
will he write ; and in proportion as he sym 
thizes with his author, so will he read him w 
grace and effect. ' \ 

" I said that Burns and my father converil > 
about poetry and farming. The poet had ne\ •ff 
taken possession of his farm of Elliesland, — t 
masons were busy building his house, — the a 
plause of the world was with him, and a little 
its money in his pocket, — in short, he had founc^ 
a resting-place at last. He spoke with great de-, 
light about the excellence of his farm, and parti- 
cularly about the beauty of the situation. * Yes,' 
my father said, 'the walks on the river bank are 
fine, and you will see from your windows some 
miles of the Nith ; but you will also see several 
farms of fine rich holm,^ any one of which you 
might have had. You have made a poet's choice, 
rather than a farmer's, 

* IMm is flat, rich meadow land, intervening- between a 
stream and the g-encraJ elevation of the adjoining- country. 



I 



202 LIFE OF 

" If Burns had much of a farmer's skill, he had 
little of a farmer's prudence and economy. 1 once 
inquired of James Corrie, a sagacious old farmer, 
whose ground marched with Elliesland, the cause 
of the poet's failure. ' Faith,' said he, ' how could 
he miss but fail, when his servants ate the bread 
as fast as it was baked? I don't mean figuratively, 
I mean literally. Consider a little. At that time 
close economy was necessary to have enabled a 
man to clear twenty pounds a year by Elliesland. 
Now, Burns' own handy work was out of the ques- 
tion : he neither ploughed, nor sowed, nor reaped, 
at least like a hard-working farmer; and then he 
had a bevy of servants from Ayrshire. The lasses 
did nothing but bake bread, and the lads sat by the 
fireside, and ate it warm with ale. Waste of time 
and consumption of food would soon reach to 
twenty pounds a year.' " 

" The truth of the case," says Mr. Cunning- 
ham, in another letter with which he has favored 
me, "the truth is, that if Robert Burns liked his 
farm, it was more for the beauty of the situation 
than for the labors which it demanded. He was 
too wayward to attend to the stated duties of a 
husbandman, and too impatient to wait till the 
ground returned in gain the cultivation he bestow- 
ed upon it. 

"The condition of a farmer, a Nithsdale one, I 
mean, was then very humble. His one-story 
house had a covering of straw, and a clay floor ; 
the furniture was from the hands of a country car- 
penter; and, between the roof and floor, there 
seldom intervened a smoother ceiling than of 
rough rods and grassy turf — while a huge lang- 
settle of black oak for himself, and a carved arm- 
chair for his wife, were the only matters out of 



ROBERT BURNS. 203 

keeping with the homely looks of his residence. 
He took all his meals in his own kitchen, and pre- 
sided regularly among his children and domestics. 
He performed family worship every evening — 
except during the hurry of harvest, when that 
duty was perhaps limited to Saturday night. A 
few religious books, two or three favorite poets, 
the history of his own country, and his Bible, 
aided him in forming the minds and manners of 
the family. To domestic education, Scotland 
owes as much as to the care of her clergy, and 
the excellence of her parish schools. 

"The picture out of doors was less interesting. 
The ground from which the farmer sought support 
was generally in a very moderate state of cultiva- 
tion. The implements with which he tilled his 
land were primitive and clumsy, and his own 
knowledge of the management of crops exceed- 
ingly limited. He plodded on in the regular sloth- 
ful routine of his ancestors ; he rooted out no 
bushes, he dug up no stones; he drained not, nei- 
ther did he inclose ; and weeds obtained their 
full share of the dung and the lime, which he be- 
stowed more like a medicine than a meal on his 
soil. His plough was the rude old Scotch one ; 
his harrows had as often teeth of wood as of iron ; 
his carts were heavy and low-wheeled, or were, 
more properly speaking, tumbler-cars, so called to 
distinguish them from trail-cars, both of which 
were in common use. On these rude carriages 
his manure was taken to the field, and his crop 
brought home. The farmer himself corresponded 
in all respects with his imperfect instruments. 
His poverty secured him from risking costly ex- 
periments ; and his hatred of innovation made him 
entrench himself behind a breast-work of old 
maxims and rustic saws, which he interpreted as 
17* 



204 LIFE OF 

oracles delivered against imp7vve?nent. With 
ground in such condition, with tools so unfit, and 
with knowledge so imperfect, he sometimes suc- 
ceeded in wringing a tew hundred pounds Scots 
from the farm he occupied. Such was generally 
the state of agriculture when Burns came to Niths- 
dale. I know not how far his own skill was equal 
to the task of improvement — his trial was short 
and unfortunate. An important change soon took 
place, by which he was not fated to profit ; he 
liad not the foresight to see its approach, nor, pro- 
bably, the fortitude to await its coming. 

"In the year 1790 much of the ground in Niths- 
dale was leased at seven and ten and fifteen shil- 
lings per acre; and the farmer, in his person and 
his house, differed little from the peasants and 
mechanics around him. He would have thought 
his daughter wedded in her degree, had she mar- 
ried a joiner or a mason ; and at kirk or market, 
all men beneath the rank of a "portioner" of the 
soil mingled together, equals in appearance and 
importance. But the war, which soon commenced, 
gave a decided impulse to agriculture ; the army 
and navy consumed largely; corn rose in demand; 
the price augmented ; more land was called into 
cultivation ; and, as leases expired, the proprietors 
improved the grounds, built better houses, en- 
larged the rents; and the farmer was soon borne 
on the wings of sudden wealth above his original 
condition. His house obtained a slated roof, sash- 
windows, carpeted floors, plastered walls, and 
even began to exchange the hanks of yarn with 
which it was formerly hung, for paintings and pia- 
nofortes. He laid aside his coat of home-made 
clo^h ; he retired from his seat among his ser- 
vants ; he — I am grieved to mention it — gave up 
family worship as a thing unfashionable, and be- 



ROBERT BURNS. 205 

came a kind of rustic gentleman, who rode a blood 
horse, and galloped home on market nights at the 
peril of his own neck, and to the terror of every 
modest pedestrian.* His daughters, too, no longer 
prided themselves in well bleached linen and 
home-made webs ; they changed their linsey- 
wolsey gowns for silk ; and so ungracefully did 
their new state sit upon them, that I have seen 
their lovers coming in iron-shod clogs to their 
carpeted floors, and two of the proudest young 
women in the parish skaling dung to their father's 
potato-field in silk stockings. 

" When a change like this took place, and a 
farmer could, with a dozen years' industry, be able 
to purchase the land he rented — which many were, 
and many did — the same, or a still more profita- 
ble change might have happened with respect to 
Elliesland ; and Burns, had he stuck by his lease 
and his plough, would, in all human possibility, 
have found the independence which he sought, 
and sought in vain, from the coldness and parsi- 
mony of mankind." 

Mr. Cunningham sums up his reminiscences 
of Burns at Elliesland in these terms: 

" During the prosperity of his farm, my father 
often said that Burns conducted himself wisely, 
and like one anxious for his name as a man, and 
his fame as a poet. He went to Dunscore Kirk 
on Sunday, though he expressed oftener than once 
his dislike to the stern Calvinism of that strict old 
divine, Mr. Kirkpatrick ; — he assisted in forming 
a reading club ; and at weddings and house-heat- 

* Mr. Cunning-ham's description accords with the lines of 
Crabbe: 

" Who rides his hunter, who his horse adorns, 
Who drinks his wine, and his disbursements scorns, 
Who freely lives, and loves to show he can— 
This is the farmer made the gentlejuan." 



206 LIFE OF 

ings, and kirns, and other scenes of festivity, he 
was a welcome guest, universally liked by the 
young and the old. But the failure of his farming 
projects, and the limited income with which he 
was compelled to support an increasing family and 
an expensive station in life, preyed on his spirits ; 
and during these fits of despair, he v/as willing too 
often to become the companion of the thought- 
less and the gross. I am grieved to say, that be- 
sides leaving the book too much for the bowl, and 
grave and wise friends for lewd and reckless 
companions, he was also in the occasional prac- 
tice of composing songs, in which he surpassed 
the licentiousness, as well as the wit and humor, 
of the old Scottish muse. These have unfortu- 
nately found their way to the press, and I am 
afraid they cannot be recalled. 

" In conclusion, I may say, that few men have 
had so much of the poet about them, and few 
poets so much of the man ; — the man was pro- 
bably less pure than he ought to have been, but 
the poet was pure and bright to the last." 

The reader must be sufficiently prepared to 
hear, that from the time when he entered on his 
excise duties, the poet more and more neglected 
the concerns of his farm. Occasionally, he might 
be seen holding the plough, an exercise in which 
he excelled, and was proud of excelling, or stalk- 
ing down his furrows, with the white sheet of 
grain wrapt about him, a " tenty seedsman ;" but 
he was more commonly occupied in far different 
pursuits. " I am now," says he, in one of his let- 
ters, " a poor rascally ganger, condemned to gal- 
lop two hundred miles every week, to inspect dirty 
ponds and yeasty barrels." 

Both in verse and in prose he has recorded the 
feelings with which he first followed his new vo* 



ROBERT BURNS. 207 

cation. His jests on the subject are uniformly 
bitter. "I have the same consolation," he tells Mr. 
Ainslie, "which I once heard a recruiting sergeant 
give to his audience in the streets of Kilmarnock : 
' Gentlemen, for your further encouragement, I 
can assure you that ours is the most blackguard 
corps under the crown, and, consequently, with 
us an honest fellow has the surest chance of pre- 
ferment.' " He winds up almost all his statements 
of his feelings on this matter, in the same strain. 

" I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, 

They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies. 

Ye ken yoursell, my heart right proud is, 

Ineedna vaunt; 
But I'll sned besoms — thraw saugh-woodies, 

Before they want." 

On one occasion, however, he takes a high 
tone. " There is a certain stigma," says he to 
Bishop Geddes, " in the name of exciseman ; but 
I do not intend to borrow honor from any profes- 
sion :" — which may perhaps remind the reader 
of Gibbon's lofty language, on finally quitting the 
learned and polished circles of London and Pa- 
ris, for his Swiss retirement : " I am too modest, 
or too proud, to rate my value by that of my as- 
sociates." 

Burns, in his perpetual perambulations over the 
moors of Dumfries-shire, had every temptation to 
encounter, which bodily fatigue, the blandishments 
of hosts and hostesses, and the habitual manners 
of those who acted along with him in the duties of 
the excise, could present. He was, moreover, 
wherever he went, exposed to perils of his own, 
by the reputation which he had earned as a poet, 
and by his extraordinary powers of entertainment 
in conversation. From the castle to the cottage, 
every door flew open at his approach ; and the old 



208 LIFE OF 

system of hospitality, then flourishing, rendered 
it difficult for the most soberly inclined guest to 
rise from any man's board in the same trim that 
he sat down to it. The farmer, if Burns was seen 
passing, left his reapers, and trotted by the side 
of Jenny Geddes, until he could persuade the 
bard that the day was hot enough to demand an 
extra-libation. If he entered an inn at midnight, 
after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his 
arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret ; 
and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and 
all his guests were assembled round the ingle ; 
the largest punchbowl was produced ; and 

" Be ours this night— who knows what comes to-morrow?" 

was the language of every eye in the circle that 
welcomed him.* The stateliest gentry of the 
county, whenever they had especial merriment in 
view, called in the wit and eloquence of Burns to 
enliven their carousals. The famous song of The 
Wliistle of worth commemorates a scene of this 
kind, more picturesque in some of its circumstan- 
ces than every day occurred, yet strictly in cha- 
racier with the usual tenor of life among this jo- 
vial squirearchy. Three gentlemen of ancient de- 
scent had met to determine, by a solemn drinking 
match, who should possess the Whistle, which a 
common ancestor of them all had earned ages 
before, in a Bacchanalian contest of the same sort 
with a noble toper from Denmark ; and the poet 
was summoned to watch over and celebrate the 
issue of the debate. 

* These particulars are from a letter of David Maccullocli, 
Esq., who, being at this period a very young gentleman, a 
passionate admirer of Burns, and a capital singer of many 
of his serious songs, used often, in his enthusiasm, to accom- 
pany the poet on his professional excursions. 



ROBERT BURNS. 209 

" Then up rose the bard like a prophet in drink, 
Craig-darroch shall soar when creation shall sink ; 
But if thou would' st flourish immortal in rhyme, 
Come, one bottle more, and have at the sublime." 

Nor, as has already been hinted, was he safe 
from temptations of this kind, even when he was 
at home, and most disposed to enjoy in quiet the 
society of his wife and children. Lion-gazers from 
all quarters beset him ; they eat and drank at his 
cost, and often went away to criticise him and his 
fare, as if they had done Burns and his hlack 
howl^ great honor in condescending to be enter- 
tained for a single evening, with such company 
and such liquor. 

We have on record various glimpses of him, as 
he appeared while he was half farmer, half-excise- 
man ; and some of these present him in attitudes 
and aspects, on which it would be pleasing to 
dwell. For example, the circumstances under 
which the verses on The Wounded Hare were 
written, are mentioned generally by the poet him- 
self. James Thomson, son of the occupier of a 
farm adjoining Elliesland, told Allan Cunningham, 
that it was he who wounded the animal. " Burns," 
said this person, "was in the custom, when at 
home, of strolling by himself in the twilight every 
evening, along the Nith, and by the march be- 
tween his land and ours. The hares often came 
and nibbled our wheat braird ; and once, in the 
gloaming, — it was in April, — I got a shot at one, 
and wounded her: she ran bleeding by Burns, who 

* Burns' famous black punchbowl, of Inverary marble, 
was the nuptial gift of his father-in-law, Mr. Armour, who 
himself fasnioned it. After passing" through many hands, 
it is now in excellent keeping, that oi" Alexander Hastie, Esq., 
of London. 



210 LIFE OP 

was pacing up and down by himself, not far from 
me. He started, and with a bitter curse, ordered 
me out of his sight, or he would throw me in- 
stantly into the Nith. And had I stayed, I'll war- 
rant he would have been as good as his word — 
though I was both young and strong." 

Among other curious travelers who found their 
way about this time to Elliesland, was Captain 
Grose, the celebrated antiquarian, whom Burns 
briefly describes as 

" A fine fatfodg-el wight — 

Of stature shortj but g-enius bright ;" 

and who has painted his oiwn portrait, both with 
pen and pencil, at full length, in his Olio. This 
gentleman's taste and pursuits are ludicrously set 
forth in the copy of verses — 

" Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots, 
Frae Maidenkirk to John O' Groats, 
A chield's amang ye takin' notes ;" &c. 

and, inter alia, his love of port is not forgotten. 
Grose and Burns had too much in common, not to 
become great friends. The poet's accurate know- 
ledge of Scottish phraseology and customs, was of 
great use to the researches of the humorous antiqua- 
rian ; and, above all, it is to their acquaintance that 
we owe Tam o' Shanter. Burns told the story as 
he had heard it in Ayrshire, in a letter to the Cap- 
tain, and was easily persuaded to versify it. The 
poem was the work of one day ; and Mrs. Burns 
well remembers the circumstances. He spent 
most of the day on his favorite walk by the river, 
where, in the afternoon, she joined him with some 
of her children. " He was busily engaged croon- 
ing to himsell, and Mrs. Burns perceiving that her 
presencewasan inter ruption, loitered behind with 



ROBERT BURNS. 21 1 

her little ones among the broom. Her attention 
was presently attracted by the strange and wild 
gesticulations of the bard, who, now at some dis- 
tance, was agonized with an ungovernable access 
of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with the 
tears rolling down his cheeks, those animated 
verses which he had just conceived : 

' Now Tarn ! O Tarn ! had thae been queans 
A' plump and strappin' in their teens ; 
Their sarks, instead of creeshie flannen, 
Been snaw-white seventecn-hundcr * linen, — 
Thir breeks o' mine, ray only pair, 
That ance were plush o' good blue hair, 
I wad hae g-i'en them off my hurdles, 
For ae blink o' the bony burdies !' " t 

To the last Burns was of opinion that Tarn o* 
Shanter was the best of all his productions ; and 
although it does not always happen that poet and 
public come to the same conclusion on such points, 
I believe the decision in question has been all but 
unanimously approved of. 

The admirable execution of the piece, so far as 
it goes, leaves nothing to wish for ; the only criti- 
cism has been, that the catastrophe appears un- 
worthy of the preparation. Burns might have 
avoided this error, — if error it be, — had he fol- 
lowed not the Ayrshire, but the Galloway, edition 
of the legend. According to that tradition, the 
Cutty-Sark who attracted the special notice of the 
bold intruder on the Satanic ceremonial, was no 

* " The manufacturer's terms for a fine linen, woven on a 
reed of 1700 divisions." — Cromek. 

tThe above is quoted from a MS. journal of Cromek. 
Mr. M'Diarmid confirms the statement, and adds, that the 

Eoet, having- committed the verses to writing on the top of 
is sod-dyke over the water, came into the house, and read 
them Immediately in hig-h triumph at the fireside. 
18 



212 



LIFE OF 



Other than the pretty wife of a farmer residing in 
the same village with himself, and of whose unholy 
propensities no suspicion had ever been whisper- 
ed. The Galloway Tarn being thoroughly sober- 
ed by terror, crept to his bed the moment he reach- 
ed home after his escape, and said nothing of what 
had happened to any of his family. He was awa- 
kened in the morning with the astounding intelli- 
gence that his horse had been found dead in the 
stable, and a woman's hand clotted with blood, ad- 
hering to the tail. Presently it was reported, that 
Cutty-Sark had burnt her hand greviously over- 
night, and was ill in bed, but obstinately refused 
to let her wound be examined by the village leech. 
Hereupon Tarn, disentagling the bloody hand 
from the hair of his defunct favorite's tail, proceed- 
ed to the residence of the fair witch, and forcibly 
pulling her stump to view, showed his trophy, and 
narrated the whole circumstances of the adven- 
ture. The poor victim of the black-art was con- 
strained to confess her guilty practices in presence 
of the priest and the laird, and was forthwith 
burnt alive, under their joint auspices, within wa- 
termark on the Solway Frith. 

Such, Mr. Cunningham informs me, is the ver- 
sion of this story current in Galloway and Dum- 
fries-shire : but it may be doubted whether, even 
if Burns was acquainted with it, he did not choose 
wisely in adhering to the Ayrshire legend, as he 
had heard it in his youth. It is seldom that tales 
of popular superstition are effective in proportion 
to their completeness of solution and catastrophe. 
On the contrary, they, like the creed to which they 
belong, suffer little in a picturesque point of view, 
by exhibiting a maimed and fragmentary cha- 
racter, that in nowise satisfies strict taste, either 



ROBERT BURNS. 213 

critical or moral. Dreams based in darkness, 
may fitly terminate in a blank : the cloud opens, 
and the cloud closes. The absence of definite 
scope and purpose, appears to be of the essence 
of the mythological grotesque. 

Burns lays the scene of this remarkable per- 
formance almost on the spot where he was born ; 
and all the terrific circumstances by which he has 
marked the progress of Tam's midnight journey, 
are drawn from local tradition. 

" By this time he was cross the ford 
Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd, 
And past the birks and meikle stane, 
Whare drucken Charlie brak's neck-bane ; 
And through the whins, and by the cairn, 
Whare hunters fand the murder' d bairn ; 
And near the thorn, aboon the well, 
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersell." 

None of these tragic memoranda were derived 
from imagination. Nor was Tam O'Shanter 
himself an imaginary character. Shanter is a 
farm close to Kirkoswald's,that smuggling village, 
in which Burns, when nineteen years old, studied 
mensuration, and " first became acquainted with 
scenes of swaggering riot." The then occupier 
of Shanter, by name Douglas Grahame, was, by 
all accounts, equally what the Tam of the poet 
appears, — a jolly, careless rustic, who took much 
more interest in the contraband traffic of the 
coast, than the rotation of crops. Burns knew 
the man well ; and to his dying day, he, nothing 
loath, passed among his rural compeers by the 
name of Tam o' Shanter.* 

A {q\w words will bring us to the close of Burns' 

* The above information is derived from Mr. R. Cham- 

bera. 



214 LIFE OF 

career at Elliesland. Mr. Ramsay of Ochtertyre,, 
happening to pass through Nithsdale in 1790, 
met Burns riding rapidly near Closeburn. The 
poet was obhged to pursue his professional jour- 
ney, but sent on Mr. Ramsey and his fellow-tra- 
veler to Elliesland, where he joined them as soon 
as his duty permitted him, saying, as he entered, 
" I come, to use the words of Shakspeare, stewed, 
in Jiaste.^' Mr. Ramsey was " much pleased with 
his uxor Sabina qualis, and his modest mansion, 
so unlike the habitation of ordinary rustics." He 
told his guests he was preparing to write a drama, 
which he was to call ^' Rob M'QuecJian^s Elshin, 
from a popular story of King Robert the Bruce 
being defeated on the Carron, when the heel of 
his boot having loosened in the flight, he applied 
to one Robert M'Quechan to fix it ; who, to^make 
sure, ran his awl nine inches up the king's heel." 
The evening was spent delightfully. A gentle- 
man of dry temperament, who looked in acciden- 
tally, soon partook the contagion, and sat listening 
to Burns with the tears running over his cheeks. 
*' Poor Burns !" says Mr. Ramsay, " from that 
time I met him no more." 

The summer after, some English travelers, 
calling at Elliesland, were told that the poet was 
walking by the river. They proceeded in search 
of him, and presently, "on a rock that projected 
into the stream, they saw a man employed in an- 
gling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap 
made of a fox's skin on his head ; a loose great- 
coat, fastened round him by a belt, from whicb 
depended an enormous Highland broadsword. 
(Was he still dreaming of the Bruce ?) It was 
Burns. He received them with great cordiality, 
and asked them to share his humble dinaer.'" 



ROBEBT BURNS. 215 

These travelers also classed the evening they 
spent at Ellieslandwith the brightest of their lives. 

Towards the close of 1791, the poet, finally- 
despairing of his farm, determined to give up his 
lease, which the kindness of his landlord rendered 
easy of arrangement ; and procuring an appoint- 
ment to the Dumfries division, which raised his 
salary from the revenue to £70 per annum, re- 
moved his family to the county town, in which he 
terminated his days. His conduct as an excise 
officer had hitherto met with uniform approbation ; 
and he nourished warm hopes of being promoted, 
when he had thus avowedly devoted himself alto- 
gether to the service. 

He left Elliesland, however, with a heavy heart. 
The affection of his neighbors was rekindled in 
all its early fervor by the thoughts of parting with 
him ; and the roup of his farming-stock and other 
cfiects, was, in spite of whiskey, a very melan- 
choly scene. The competition for his chatties 
(says Allan Cunningham) was eager, each being 
anxious to secure a memorandum of Burns' resi- 
dence among them. 

It is pleasing to know that among other " titles 
manifold " to their respect and gratitude, Burns, 
at the suggestion of Mr. Riddel of Friars'-carse, 
had superintended the formation of a subscription 
library in the parish. His letters to the booksel- 
lers on this subject do him much honor : his 
choice of authors (which business was naturally 
left to his discretion) being in the highest degree 
judicious. Such institutions are now common, 
almost universal, indeed, in the rural districts of 
southern Scotland ; but it should never be forgot- 
ten that Burns was among the first, if not the very 
first, to set the example. " He was so good," says 
18* 



216 



LIFE OF 



Mr. Riddel, <' as to take the whole managcmeDt 
of this concern ; he was treasurer, librarian, and 
censor, to our little society, who will long have a 
grateful sense of his public spirit, and exertions 
for their improvement and information."* 

Once, and only once, did Burns quit his resi- 
dence at Elliesland to revisit Edinburgh. His 
object was to close accounts with Creech ; that 
business accomplished, he returned immediately, 
and he never again saw the capital. He thus 
writes to Mrs. Dunlop ; — " To a man who has a 
home, however humble and remote, if that home 
is, like mine, the scene of domestic comfort, the 
bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a business of 
sickening disgust — 

' Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate you !' 

" When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rat- 
tling equipage of some gaping blockhead should 
mangle me in the mire, 1 am tempted to exclaim, 
what merits had he had, or what demerits have I 
had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is 
ushered into this state of being with the sceptre 
of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, 
and I kicked into the world, the sport of folly or 

the victim of pride often as I have glided 

with humble stealth through the pomp of Prince's 
street, it has suggested itself to me as an improve- 
ment on the present human figure, that a man, 
in proportion to his own conceit of his conse- 
quence in the world, could have pushed out the 
longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes 
out his horns, or as we draw out a perspective." 
There is bitterness in this badinage. 

* Letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart., in the Statistical Ac- 
count of Scotland, parish of Dunscore. 



ROBEBT BURNS. 217 



CHAPTER VIII. 



" The King^'s most humble servant, I 
Can scarcely spare a minute ; 

But I am yours at dinner-time, 
Or else the devil 's in it."* 



The four principal biographers of our poet. 
Heron, Currie, Walker, and Irving, concur in the 
general statement, that his moral course from the 
time when he settled in Dumfries, was downwards. 
Heron knew more of the matter personally than 
any of the others, and his words are these : "la 
Dumfries his dissipation became still more deeply 
habitual. He was here exposed more than in the 
^country, to be solicited to share the riot of the 
dissolute and the idle. Foolish young men, such 
as writers' apprentices, young surgeons, mer- 
chants' clerks, and his brother excisemen, flocked 
eagerly about him, and from time co time pressed 
^im to drink with them, that they might enjoy his 
wicked wit. The Caledonian Club, too, and the 
Dumfries and Galloway Hunt, had occasional 
meetings in Dumfries after Burns came to reside 
there, and the poet was of course invited to share 
their hospitality, and hesitated not to accept the 
invitation. The morals of the town were> in con- 
sequence of its becoming so much the scene of 

* "The above answer to an invitation was written ex- 
tempore on a leaf torn from his Excise hook."— Cromek's 



218 LIFE Of 

public amusement, not a little corrupted, and 
though a husband and a father, Burns did not es- 
cape suffering by the general contamination, in a 
manner which I forbear to describe. In the in- 
tervals between his diilerent fits of intemperance, 
he suffered the keenest anguish of remorse and 
horribly afflictive foresight. His Jean behaved 
with a degree of maternal and conjugal tender- 
ness and prudence, which made him feel more 
bitterly the evils of his misconduct, though they 
could not reclaim him." 

This picture, dark as it is, wants some distress- 
ing shades that mingle in the parallel one by Dr. 
Currie ; it wants nothing, however, of which truth 
demands the insertion. That Burns, dissipated 
enough long ere he went to Dumfries, became still 
more dissipated in a town, than he had been in the 
country, is certain. It may also be true, that his 
wife had her own particular causes, sometimes, 
for dissatisfaction. But that Burns ever sunk into 
a toper — that he ever was addicted to solitary 
drinking — that his bottle ever interfered with his 
discharge of his duties as an exciseman — or that, 
in spite of some transitory folHes, he ever ceased to 
be a most affectionate husband — all these charges 
have been insinuated — and they are all false. 
His intemperance was, as Heron says, in jits ; 
his aberrations of all kinds were occasional not 
systematic ; they were all to himself the sources 
of exquisite misery in the retrospect ; they were 
the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was 
never deadened, of one who encountered more 
temptations from without and from within, than 
the immense majority of mankind, far from having 
tocontendagainst,areevenabletoimagine;--ofone, 
finally, who prayed for pardon, where alone efTec- 



ROBERT BURNS. 219 

tual pardon could be found ; — and who died ere 
he had reached that term of life up to which the 
passions of many, who, their mortal career being 
regarded as a whole, are honored as among the 
most virtuous of mankind, have proved too strong 
for the control of reason. We have already seen 
that the poet was careful of decorum in all things 
during the brief space of his prosperity at Ellies- 
laud, and that he became less so on many points, 
as the prospects of his farming speculation dark- 
ened around him. It seems to be equally certain, 
that he entertained high hopes of promotion in 
the excise at the period of his removal to Dum- 
fries ; and that the comparative recklessness of 
his later conduct there, was consequent on a cer- 
tain overclouding of these professional expecta- 
tions. The case is broadly stated so by Walker 
and Paul ; and there are hints to the same effect 
in the narrative of Currie. 

The statement has no doubt been exaggerated, 
but it has its foundation in truth ; and by the 
kindness of Mr. Train, supervisor at Castle 
Douglas in Galloway, I shall presently be ena- 
bled to give some details which may throw light 
on this business. 

Barns was much patronised when in Edinburgh 
by the Honorable Henry Erskine, Dean of the 
Faculty of Advocates, and other leading whigs of 
the place — much more so, to their honor be it 
said, than by any of the influential adherents of 
the then administration. His landlord at Ellies- 
land, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, his neighbor, Mr. 
Riddel of Friars-Carse, and most of the other 
gentlemen who showed him special attention, be- 
longed to the same political party ; and, on his 
removal to Dumfries, it so happened, that some 



220 LIFE OF 

of his immediate superiors in the revenue service 
of the district, and other persons of standing and 
authority, into whose society he was thrown, en- 
tertained sentiments of the same description. 

Burns, whenever in his letters he talks seriously 
of political matters, uniformly describes his early 
jacobitismasmere "matter of fancy." It may,how- 
ever, be easily behoved, that a fancy like his, long 
indulged in dreams of that sort, was well prepared 
to pass into certain other dreams which had, as 
calm men now view the matter, but little in com- 
mon with them, except that both ahke involved 
some feeling of dissatisfaction with " the existing 
order of things." Many of the old elements of 
political disaffection in Scotland, put on a new 
shape at the outbreaking of the French revolu- 
tion ; and Jacobites became half.jacobins,ere they 
were at all aware in what the doctrines of ja- 
cobinisn were to end. The whigs naturally re- 
garded the first dawn of freedom in France with 
feehngs of sympathy, delight, exultation ; in truth, 
few good men of any party regarded it with more 
of fear than of hope. The general, the all but 
universal tone of feeling was favorable to the first 
assailants of the Bourbon despotism ; and there 
were few who more ardently participated in the 
general sentiment of the day than Burns. 

The revulsion of feeling that took place in this 
country at large, when wanton atrocities began to 
stain the course of the French revolution, and 
Burke lifted up his powerful voice to denounce its 
leaders, as, under pretence of love for freedom, the 
enemies of all social order, morality, and religion, 
was violent in proportion to the strength and ardor 
of the hopes in which good men had been eager to 
indulge, and cruelly disappointed. The great body 



ROBERT BURNS. 221 

of the whigs, however, were slow to abandon the 
cause which they had espoused ; and although their 
chiefs were wise enough to draw back when they 
at length perceived that serious plans for overturn- 
ing the political institutions of our own country 
had been hatched and fostered, under the pretext 
of admiring and comforting the destroyers of a fo- 
reign tyranny — many of their provincial retainers, 
having uttered their sentiments all along with pro- 
vincial vehemence and openness, found it no easy 
matter to retreat gracefully along with them. 
Scenes more painful at the time, and more so 
even now in the retrospect, than had for genera- 
tions afflicted Scotland, were the consequences of 
the rancor into which party feelings on both sides 
now rose and fermented. Old and dear ties of 
friendship were torn in sunder ; society was for a 
time shaken to its centre. In the most extrava- 
gant dreams of the Jacobites, there had always 
been much to command respect, high chivalrous 
devotion, reverence for old affections, ancestral 
loyalty, and the generosity of romance. In the 
new species of hostility, every thing seemed mean 
as well as perilous ; it was scorned even more 
than hated. The very name stained whatever it 
came near ; and men that had known and loved 
each other from boyhood, stood aloof, if this in- 
fluence interfered, as if it had been some loath- 
some pestilence. 

There was a great deal of stately toryism at 
this time in the town of Dumfries, which was the 
favorite winter retreat of many of the best gen- 
tlemen's families of the south of Scotland. Feel- 
ings that worked more violently in Edinburgh than 
in London, acquired additional energy still, in 
this provincial capital. All men's eyes were upon 



222 LIFE OP 

Barns. He was the standing marvel of the place 5 
his toasts, his jokes, his epigrams, his songs, were 
the daily food of conversation and scandal ; and 
he, open and careless, and thinking he did no 
great harm in saying and singing what many of 
his superiors had not the least objection to hear 
and applaud, soon began to be considered among 
the local admirers and disciples of the good old 
King and his minister, as the most dangerous of 
all the apostles of sedition, — and to be shunned 
accordingly. 

A gentleman of that county, whose name I have 
already more than once had occasion to refer to, 
has often told me, that he was seldom more grie- 
ved, than when riding into Dumfries one fine sum- 
mer's evening, about this time, to attend a county- 
ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady 
side of the principal street of the town, while the 
opposite side was gay with successive groups of 
gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the 
festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared 
willing to recognize him. The horseman dis- 
mounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing 
to him to cross the street, said, " Nay, nay, my 
young friend, — that's all over now ;" and quoted^ 
after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Bail- 
lie's pathetic ballad, — 

" His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new ; 
But now he lets't wear ony way it will hing", 
And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-bing". 

" O were we young-, as we ance hae been, 
We sud hae been g-alioping- doun on yon green, 
And linking- it ower the lily white lea, — 
And werena my heart light 1 wad die^ 

It was little in Burns' character to let his feelings 
on certain subjects, escape in this fashion. He, 



ROBERT BURNS. 223 

immediately after citing these verses, assumed the 
sprightHness of his most pleasing manner ; and 
taking his young friend home with him, entertained 
him very agreeably until the hour of the ball ar- 
rived, with a bowl of his usual potation, and Bon- 
nie Jean's singing of some verses which he had 
recently composed. But this incident belongs, 
probably, to a somewhat later period of our 
poet's residence in Dumfries. 

The records of the excise-office are silent con- 
corning the suspicions which the commissioners 
of the time certainly took up in regard to Burns 
as a political offender — according to the phraseo- 
logy of the tempestuous period, a democrat. In 
that department, as then conducted, I am assured 
that nothing could have been more unlike the 
usual course of things, than that one syllable 
should have been set down in writing on such a 
subject, unless the case had been one of extre- 
mities. That an inquiry was instituted, we know 
from Burns' own letters — and what the exact ter- 
mination of the inquiry was, can no longer, it is 
probable, be ascertained. 

According to the tradition of the neighborhood, 
Burns, inter alia, gave great offence by demurring 
in a large mixed company to the proposed toast, 
" the health of William Pitt;" and left the room 
in indignation, because the society rejected what 
he wished to substitute, namely, "the health of a 
greater and a better man, George Washington." 
I suppose the warmest admirer of Mr. Pitt's talents 
and politics would hardly venture now-a-days to 
dissent substantially from Burns' estimate of the 
comparative merits of these two great men. The 
name of Washington, at all events, when contem- 
porary passions shall have finally sunk into the 
19 



224 LIFE OF 

peace of the grave, will unquestionably have its 
place in the first rank of heroic virtue, — a station 
which demands the exhibition of victory pure and 
unstained over temptations and trials extraordi- 
nary, in kind as well as strength. But at the time 
when Burns, being a servant of Mr. Pitt's govern- 
ment, was guilty of this indiscretion, it is obvious 
that a great deal " more was meant than reached 
the ear." 

In the poet's own correspondence, we have 
traces of another occurrence of the same sort. 
Burns thus writes to a gentleman at whose table 
he had dined the day before : " I was, I know, 
drunk last night, but I am sober this morning. 

From the expressions Captain — made use 

of to me, had I had nobody's welfare to care for 
but my own, we should certainly have come, ac 
cording to the manner of the world, to the neces- 
sity of murdering one another about the business. 
The words were such as generally, I believe, end 
in a brace of pistols : but I am still pleased to think 
that I did not ruin the peace and welfare of a wife 
and children in a drunken squabble. Farther, you 
know that the report of certain political opinions 
being mine, has already once before brought me to 
the brink of destruction. I dread lest last night's 
business may be interpreted in the same way. 
You, I beg, will take care to prevent it. I tax 
your wish for Mrs. Burns' welfare with the task 
of waiting on every gentleman who was present 
to state this to him ; and, as you please, show this 
letter. What, after all, was the obnoxious toast ? 
May our success in the present war he equal to the 
justice of our cause — a toast that the most outra- 
geous frenzy of loyalty cannot object to." 

Burns has been commended, sincerely by some, 



ROliERT BURNS. 



225 



and ironically by others, for putting up with the 
treatment which he received on this occasion, 

without calling Captain to account the next 

morning ; and one critic, the last I am sure that 
would have wished to say any thing unkindly about 
the poet, has excited indignation in the breast of 
Mr. Peterkin, by suggesting that Burns really had 
not, at any period of his life, those delicate feel- 
ings on certain matters, which, it must be admitted, 
no person in Burns' original rank and station is 
ever expected to act upon. The question may be 
safely intrusted to the good sense of all who can 
look to the case without pasvsion or personal irri- 
tation. No human being will ever dream that 
Robert Burns was a coward : as for the poet's 
toast about the success of the war, there can be 
no doubt that only one meaning was given to it 
by all who heard it uttered ; and as little that a 
gentleman bearing the King's commission in the 
army, if he was entitled to resent the sentiment 
at all, lost no part of his right to do so, because it 
was announced in a quibble. 

Burns, no question, was guilty of unpoliteness 
as well as indiscretion, in offering any such toasts 
as these in a mixed company ; but that such toasts 
should have been considered as attaching any 
grave suspicion to his character as a loyal subject, 
is a circumstance which can only be accounted for 
by reference to the exaggerated state of political 
feelings on all matters, and among all descriptions 
of men, at that melancholy period of disaffection, 
distrust, and disunion. Who, at any other than 
that lamentable time, would ever have dreamed of 
erecting the drinking, or declining to drink, the 
health of a particular minister, or approving, or dis- 
approving, of a particular measure of government, 



226 LIFE OF 

into the test of a man's loyalty to his King ? The 
poet Crabbc has, in one of his masterly sketches, 
given us, perhaps, a more vivid delineation of the 
jarrings and collisions which were at thisperiodthe 
perpetual curse of society than the reader may 
be able to find elsewhere. He has painted the 
sturdy tory mingling accidentally in a company 
of those who would not, like Burns, drink '* the 
health of William Pitt ;" and suffering sternly and 
sulkily under the infliction of their, to him, hor- 
rible doctrines 



"Now, dinner past, no long-er hcsupprest 

His strong- dislike to be a silent g-uest ; 

Subjects and words were now at his command — 

When disappointment frown' d on all lie plann'd. 

For, hark ! he heard, amazed, on every side, 

His church insulted, and her priests belied, 

The laws reviled, the ruling- powers abused, 

The land derided, and her foes excused — 

He heard and ponder'd. What to men so vile 

Should be his lang-uagc 7 For his threatening- style 

They were too many. If his speech were meek. 

They would despise such poor attempts to speak — 

— There were reformers of each diflicrentsort, 

Foes to the laws, the priesthood, and the court ; 

Some on their favorite plans alone intent, 

Some purely ang-ry and malevolent ; 

The rash were proud to blame their country's laws, 

The vain to seem supporters of a cause ; 

One call'd for chang-e that he would dread to see, 

jf\nother sig-h'd for Gallic liberty ; 

And numbers joining- with the forward crew, 

For no one reason — but that many do — 

How, said the Justice, can this trouble rise — 

This shame and pain, from creatures I despise 7" — 



And he has also presented the champion of 
loyalty as surrounded with kindred spirits, and 
amazed with the audacity of an intrusive democrat, 



ROBERT BURNS. 



227 



with whom he has now no more cause to keep 
terms than such gentlemen as " Captain — — " 
were wont to do with Robert Burns. 



"Is it not known, agreed, confirm'^, confest, 

That of all peoples we are govcni'd best? 

— And live there those in such all glorious state, 

Traitors protected in the land they hate, 

Rebels still warring" with the laws that give 

To them subsistence? — Ves, such wretches live ! 

The laws that nursed them they blaspheme ; the laws — 

Their sovereig-n's g-lory — and their country's cause ; — 

And who their mouth, their master fiend; and who 

Rebellion's oracle 7 — You, catiff, you ! 

— O could our country from her coasts expel 

Such foes, and nourish those that wish her well ! 

This her mild laws forbid, but we may still 

From ws eject them by our sovereig-n will — 

This let us do 

He spoke, and, seated with his former air, 
Look'd his full self, and fiU'd his ample chair ; 
Took one full bumper to each favorite cause. 
And dwelt all night on politics and laws. 
With high applauding voice which gain'd him high ap- 
plause." 



Burns, eager of temper, loud of tone, and with 
declamation and sarcasm equally at command, 
was, we may easily believe, the most hated of 
human beings, because the most dreaded, among 
the provincial champions of the administration of 
which he thought fit to disapprove. But that he 
ever, in his most ardent moods, upheld the princi- 
ples of those whose applause of the French revo- 
lution was but the mask of revolutionary designs 
at home, after these principles had been really de- 
veloped by those that maintained them, and un- 
derstood by him, it may be safely denied. There 
is not, in all his correspondence, one syllable to 
give countenance to such a charge. 
19* 



228 LIFE OF 

His indiscretion, however, did not always con- 
fine itself to words ; and though an incident now 
about to be recorded, belongs to the year 1792, 
before the French war broke out, there is reason 
to believe that it formed the main subject of the 
inquiry which the excise commissioners thought 
themselves called upon to institute touching the 
politics of our poet. 

At that period a great deal of contraband traffic, 
chiefly from the Isle of Man, was going on along 
the coasts of Galloway and Ayrshire, and the 
whole of the revenue officers from Gretna to Dum- 
fries, were placed under the orders of a superin- 
tendent residing in Annan, who exerted himself 
zealously in intercepting the decent of the smug- 
gling vessels. On the 27th of February, a suspi- 
cious-looking brig was discovered in the Solway 
Frith, and Burns was one of the party whom the 
superintendent conducted to watch her motions. 
She got into shallow water the day afterwards, 
and the officers were enabled to discover that her 
crew were numerous, armed, and not likely to 
yield without a struggle. Lewars, a brother ex- 
ciseman, an intimate friend of our poet, was ac- 
cordingly sent to Dumfries for a guard of dra- 
goons ; the superintendent, Mr. Crawford, pro- 
ceeded himself on asimilar errand to Ecclefechan, 
and Burns was left with some men under his orders, 
to watch the brig, and prevent landing or escape. 
From the private journal of one of the excisemen, 
(now in my hands,) it appears that Burns mani- 
fested considerable impatience while thus occu- 
pied, being left for many hours in a wet salt-marsh, 
with a force which he knew to be inadequate for 
the purpose it was meant to fulffil. One of his 
comrades hearing him abuse his friend Lewars 



ROBERT BURNS. ' 229 

in particular, for being slow about his journey, 
the man answered, that he also wished the devil 
had him for his pains, and that Burns, in the mean- 
time, would do well to indite a song upon the 
sluggard : Burns said nothing ; but after taking 
a few strides by himself among the reeds and 
shingle rejoined his party, and chanted to them 
the well-known ditty. The DeiVs run awa' wV the 
Exciseman.'^ Lewars arrived shortly afterwards 
with his dragoons ; and Burns, putting himself at 
their head, waded, sword in hand, to the brig, and 
was the first to board her. The crew lost heart, 
and submitted, though their numbers were greater 
than those of the assailing force. The vessel 
was condemned, and, with all her arms and 
stores, sold by auction next day at Dumfries : up- 
on which occasion. Burns, whose behavior had 
been highly commended, thought fit to purchase 
four carronades, by way of trophy. But his glee 
went a step farther ; — he sent the guns, with a 
letter, to the French Convention, requesting that 
body to accept of them as a mark of his admira- 
tion and respect. The present, and its accompa- 
niment, were intercepted at the custom-house at 
Dover ; and here, there appears to be little room 
to doubt, was the principal circumstance that drew 
on Burns the notice of his jealous superiors. 

We were not, it is true, at war with France ; 
but every one knew and felt that we were to be 
so ere long ; and nobody can pretend that Burns 
was not guilty, on this occasion, of a most absurd 
and presumptuous breach of decorum. 

♦ The account in the Reliques of this song" being" com- 
posed for "a festive meeting of all the excise-oflBicers in 
Scotland," is therefore incorrect. Mr. Train, moreover, as- 
sures me, that there never was any such meeting-. 



230 LIFE OF 

When he learned the inipressioii that had been 
created by his conduct, and its probable conse- 
quences, he wrote to his patron, Mr. Graham of 
Fintray, the following letter : — 

"December, 1792. 

*' Sir, I have been surprised, confounded, and 
distracted, by Mr. Mitchell, the collector, teUing 
me that he has received an order from your board 
to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming 
me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, 
you are a husband and a father. You know what 
you would feel to see the much-loved wife of your 
bosom, and your helpless, prattling little ones, 
turned adrift into the world, degraded and dis- 
graced, from a situation in which they had been 
respectable and respected, and left almost without 
the necessary support of a miserable existence. 
Alas ! sir, must I think that such soon will be my 
lot? and from the damned dark insinuations of 
hellish, groundless envy too ? I believe, sir, I 
may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that 
I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not 
though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than 
those I have mentioned, hung over my head. 
And I say that the allegation, whatever villain has 
made it, is a lie. To the British constitution, on 
revolution principles, next, after my God, I am 
most devoutly attached. You, sir, have been 
much and generously my friend. Heaven knows 
how Warmly I have felt the obligation, and how 
gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, has 
made you powerful and me impotent ; has giveii 
you patronage, and me dependence. I would 
not, for my single self, call on your humanity : 
were such my insular, ^unconnected situation, I 
would disperse the tear that now swells in my 



ROBERT BURNS. 231 

eye ; I could brave misfortune ; I could face 
ruin ; at the worst, ' death's thousand doors stand 
open.' But, good God ! the tender concerns 
that I have mentioned, the claims and ties that I 
see at this moment, and feel around me, how 
they unnerve courage and wither resolution ! To 
your patronage, as a man of some genius, you 
have allowed me a claim ; and your esteem, as 
an honest man, I know is my due. To these, 
sir, permit me to appeal. By these may I adjure 
you to save me from that misery which threatens 
to overwhelm me ; and which, with my latest 
breath I will say, I have not deserved !" 

On the 2d of January, (a week or two after- 
wards) we find him writing to Mrs. Dunlop in 
these terms : (The good lad}' had been offering 
him some interest with the excise board in the 
view of promotion.) "Mr. C. can be of little 
service to me at present ; at least, I should be 
shy of applying. I cannot probably be settled as 
a supervisor for several years. I must wait the 
rotation of lists, &c. Besides, some envious ma- 
licious devil has raised a little demur on my po- 
litical principles, and I wish to let that matter set- 
tle before I offer myself too much in the eye of 
my superiors. I have set henceforth a seal on 
my lips, as to these unlucky politics ; but to you 
I must breathe my sentiments. In this, as in 
every thing else, I shall show the undisguised 
emotions of my soul. War I deprecate ; misery 
and ruin to thousands are in the blast that an- 
nounces the destructive demon. But " 

" The remainder of this letter," says Cromek, 
" has been torn away by some barbarous hand." 
I can have no doubt that it was torn away by one 



232 



LIFE OF 



of tho kindest hands in tlie world— that of Mrs, 
Dunlop herself. 

The exact result of the excise board's investi- 
gation is hidden, as has been said above, in ob- 
scurity ; nor is it at all likely that the cloud will 
be withdrawn hereafter. A general impression, 
however, appears to have gone forth, that the 
affair terminated in something which Burns him- 
self considered as tantamount to the destruction 
of all hope of future promotion in his profession ; 
and it has been insinuated by almost every one of 
his biographers, that the crushing of these hopes 
operated unhappily, even fatally, on the tone of his 
mind, and, in consequence, on the habits of his 
life. In a word, the early death of Burns has 
been (by implication at least) ascribed mainly to 
the circumstances in question. Even Sir Walter 
Scott has distinctly intimated his acquiescence in 
this prevalent notion. " The political predilec- 
tions," says he, " for they could hardly be termed 
principles, of Burns, were entirely determined by 
his feelings. At his first appearance, he felt, or 
affected, a propensity to jacobitism. Indeed, a 
youth of his warm imagination in Scotland thirty 
years ago,* could hardly escape this bias. The 
side of Charles Edward was that, not surely of 
sound sense and sober reason, but of romantic 
gallantry and high achievement. The inade- 
quacy of the means by which that prince at- 
tempted to regain the crown forfeited by his 
fathers, the strange and almost poetical adven- 
tures which he underwent, — the Scottish martial 
character, honored in his victories, and degraded 
and crushed in his defeat, — the tales of the vete- 
rans who had followed his adventurous standard, 

* Quarterly Review for February, 1809. 



IIOBERT BURNS. 233 

were all calculated to impress upon the mind of 
a poet a warm interest in the cause of the House 
of Stuart. Yet the impression was not of a very 
serious cast; for Burns himself acknowledges in 
one of his letters, (Reliques, p. 240.) that 'to tell 
the matter of fact, except when my passions were 
heated by some accidental cause, my jacobitism 
was merely by way of vive la bagatelle.'' The 
same enthusiastic ardor of disposition swayed 
Burns in his choice of political tenets, when the 
country was agitated by revolutionary principles. 
That the poet should have chosen the side on 
which high talents were most likely to procure 
celebrity ; that he to whom the fastidious distinc- 
tions of society vvere always odious, should have 
listened with complacence to the voice of French 
philosophy, which denounced them as usurpa- 
tions on the rights of man, was precisely the 
thing to be expected. Yet we cannot but think, 
that if his superiors in the excise department had 
tried the experiment of soothing rather than irri- 
tating his feelings, they might have spared them- 
selves the disgrace of rendering desperate the 
possessor of such uncommon talents. For it is 
hut too certain, that from the moment his hopes of 
promotion vvere utterly blasted, his tendency to 
dissipation hurried him precipitately into those 
excesses which shortened his life. We doubt 
not, that in that awful period of national discord, 
he had done and said enough to deter, in ordi- 
nary cases, the servants of government from 
countenancing an avowed partizan of faction. 
But this partizan was Burns ! Surely the expe- 
riment of lenity might have been tried, and per- 
haps successfully. The conduct of Mr, Graham 
of Fintray, our poet's only shield against actual 



234 LIFE OF 

dismission and consequent ruin, reflects the high- 
est credit on that gentleman." 

In the general strain of sentiment in this pass- 
age, who can refuse to concur ? but I am bound 
to say, that after a careful examination of all the 
documents, printed and MS., to which 1 have had 
access, I have great doubts as to some of the 
principal facts assumed in the eloquent statement. 
I have before me, for example, a letter of Mr. 
Findlater, formerly Collector at Glasgow, who 
was, at the period in question. Burns' immediate 
superior in the Dumfries district, in which that 
very respectable person distinctly says : " I may 
venture to assert, that when Burns was accused 
of a leaning to democracy, and an inquiry into 
his conduct took place, he was subjected, in con- 
sequence thereof, to no more than perhaps a ver- 
bal or private caution to be more circumspect in 
future. Neither do I believe his promotion was 
thereby affected, as has been stated. That, had 
he lived, would, I have every reason to think, 
have gone on in the usual routine. His good and 
steady friend Mr. Graham would have attended 
to this. What cause, therefore, v^as there for de- 
pression of spirits on this account ? or how should 
he have been hurried thereby to a premature 
grave ? I never saw his spirit fail till he was 
borne down by the pressure of disease and bodily 
weakness ; and even then it would occasionally 
revive, and like an expiring lamp, emit bright 
flashes to the last."* 

When the war had fairly broken out, a bat- 
talion of volunteers was formed in Dumfries, and 
Burns was an original member of the corps. It is 
very true that his accession was objected to by 
* Letter to Donald Horuc, Esq., W. S. Edinburgh. 



EGBERT BURNS. 235 

some of his neighbors ; but these were over-ruled 
by the gentlemen who took the lead in the busi- 
ness, and the poet soon became, as might have 
been expected, the greatest possible favorite with 
his brothers in arms. His commanding officer, 
Colonel De Peyster, attests his zealous discharge 
of his duties as a member of the corps ; and their 
attachment to him was on the increase to the 
last. He was their laureate, and in that capacity 
did more good service to the government of the 
country, at a crisis of the darkest alarm and dan- 
ger, than perhaps any one person of his rank and 
station, with the exception of Dibdin, had the 
power or the inclination to render. "Burns," 
says Allan Cunningham, " was a zealous lover of 
his country, and has stamped his patriotic feelings 
in many a lasting verse. . . . His poor and honest 
Sodger laid hold at once on the public feeling, and 
it was every where sung with an enthusiasm which 
only began to abate when Campbell's Exile of 
Erin and Wounded Hussar were published. Dum- 
fries, which sent so many of her sons to the wars, 
rung with it from port to port ; and the poet, 
wherever he went, heard it echoing from house 
and hall. I wish this exquisite and useful song, 
with Scots wJia hae wV Wallace bled, — ^the Song 
of Deaths and Does haughty Gaul Invasion 
Threat — all lyrics which enforce a love of coun- 
try, and a martial enthusiasm into men's breasts, 
had obtained some reward for the poet. His 
perishable conversation was remembered by the 
rich to his prejudice — his imperishable lyrics 
were rewarded only by the admiration and tears 
of his fellow.peasants." 

Lastly, whatever the rebuke of the excise board 
amounted to — (Mr. James Gray, at that time 
20 



236 LIFE OF 

schoolmaster in Dumfries, and seeing mucli of 
Burns both as the teacher of his children, and as 
a personal friend and associate of literary taste and 
talent, is the only person who gives any thing like 
an exact statement ; and according to him, Burns 
was admonished " that it was his business to act, 
not to think") — in whatever language the censure 
was clothed, the excise board did nothing from 
which Burns had any cause to suppose that his 
hopes of ultimate promotion were extinguished. 
Nay, if he had taken up such a notion, rightly or 
erroneously, Mr. Findlater,who had him constantly 
under his eye, and who enjoyed all his confidence, 
and who enjoyed then, as he still enjoys, the ut- 
most confidence of the board, must have known 
the fact to be so. Such, I cannot help thinking, 
is the fair view of the case : at all events, we 
know that Burns, the year before he died, was 
permitted to act as a supervisor ; a thing not 
likely to have occurred had there been any reso- 
lution against promoting him in his proper order 
to a permanent situation of that superior rank. 

On the whole, then, I am of opinion that the 
excise board have been dealt with harshly, when 
men of eminence have talked of their conduct to 
Burns as affixing disgrace to them. It appears 
that Burns, being guilty unquestionably of great 
indiscretion and indecorum both of word and deed, 
was admonished in a private manner, that at such 
a period of national distraction, it behoved a pub- 
lic officer, gifted with talents and necessarily with 
influence like his, very carefully to abstain from 
conduct which, now that passions have had time 
to cool, no sane man will say became his situation; 
that Burns' subsequent conduct effaced the un- 
favorable impression created in the minds of his 



ROBERT BURNS, 



23T 



superiors ; and that he had begun to taste the 
fruits of their recovered approbation and confi- 
dence, ere his career was closed by illness and 
death. These commissioners of excise were 
themselves subordinate officers of the government, 
and strictly responsible for those under them. 
That they did try the experiment of lenity to a cer- 
tain extent, appears to be made out ; that they 
could have been justified in trying it to a farther 
extent, is at the least doubtful. But with regard 
to the government of the country itself, I must say 
I think it is much more difficult to defend them. 
Mr. Pitt's ministry gave Dibdin a pension of £200 
a-year for writing his sea songs ;* and one can- 
not help remembering, that when Burns did begin 
to excite the ardor and patriotism of his country- 
men by such songs as Mr. Cunningham has been 
alluding to, there were persons who had every 
opportunity of representing to the premier the 
claims of a greater than Dibdin. Lenity, indul- 
gence, to whatever length carried in such quarters 
as these, would have been at once safe and grace- 
ful. What the minor politicians of the day thought 
of Burns' poetry I know not ; but Mr. Pitt him- 
self appreciated it as highly as any man. " I can 
think of no verse," said the great minister, when 
Burns was no more™" I can think of no verse 
since Shakspeare's, that has so much the ap- 
pearance of coming sweetly from nature. "f 

* By the way, Mr. Fox's ministry g-ained no credit by 
diminishing- Dibdin's pension during- their brief sway, by 
one-half. 

1 1 am assured that Mr. Pitt used tliese words at the table 
of the late Lord Liverpool, soon after Burns' death. How 
that event mig-ht come to be a natural topic at that table, will 
be s.een in the sequel. 



238 



IIFE OF 



Had Burns put forth some newspaper squibs 
upon Lepaux or Carnot, or a smart pamphlet 
*' On the State of the Country," he might have 
been more attended to in his lifetime. It is com- 
mon to say, " what is everybody's business is no- 
body's business ;" but one may be pardoned for 
thinking that in such cases as this, that which 
the general voice of the country does admit to be 
everybody's business, comes in fact to be the bu- 
siness of those whom the nation intrusts with na- 
tional concerns. 

To return to Sir Walter Scott's reviewal — it 
seems that he has somewhat overstated the poli- 
tical indiscretions of which Burns was actually 
guilty. Let us hear the counter-statement of Mr. 
Gray, who, as has already been mentioned, enjoy- 
ed Burns' intimacy and confidence during his 
residence at Dumfries. — No one, who knows any 
thing of that excellent man, will for a moment 
suspect him of giving any other than what he be- 
lieves to be true. 

" Burns (says he) was enthusiastically fond of 
liberty, and a lover of the popular part of our con- 
stitution ; but he saw and admired the just and de- 
licate proportions of the political fabric, and no- 
thing could be farther from his aim than to level 
with the dust the venerable pile reared by the la- 
bors and the wisdom of ages. That provision of 
the constitution, however, by which it is made to 
contain a self-correcting principle, obtained no in- 
considerable share of his admiration : he was, 
therefore, a zealous advocate of constitutional re- 
form. The necessity of this he often supported in 
conversation with all the energy of an irresistible 
eloquence ; but there is no evidence that he ever 
went farther. He was a member of no political 



ROBERT BURNS. 239 

club. At the time when, in certain societies, the 
mad cry of revohition was raised from one end of 
the kingdom to the other, his voice was never 
heard in their debates, nor did he ever support 
their opinions in writing, or correspond with them 
in any form whatever. Though hmited to an in- 
come which any other man would have consider- 
ed poverty, he refused £50 a-year offered to him 
for a weekly article, by the proprietors of an op- 
position paper ; and two reasons, equally honora- 
ble to him, induced him to reject this proposal. 
His independent spirit spurned the idea of be- 
coming the hireling of a party ; and whatever 
may have been his opinion of the men and mea- 
sures that then prevailed, he did not think it right 
to fetter the operations of that government by 
which he was employed." 

In strong confirmation of the first part of this 
statement by Mr. Gray,* we have the following ex- 
tract from the poet's own private diary, never, in 
all human probability, designed to meet the public 
eye. — " Whatever might be my sentiments of re- 
publics, ancient or modern, I ever abjured the idea 
of such changes here. A constitution which, in 
its original principles, experience has proved to be 
every way fitted for our happiness, it would be in- 
sanity to abandon for an untried visionary theory." 
This surely is not the language of one of those 
who then said and sung broadly and boldly 

"Of old thing's all are over old ; 
Of g-Qod thing's none are g-ood enoug-h ; 
We'll sliow that we can help to frame 
A world of other stuff," 

♦ Mr. Gray removed from the school of Dumfries to the 
Hig-h School of Edinburg-h, in which eminent seiifiinary he 
for many years labored with disting-uished success- He 
20* 



40 LIFE OF 

As to the delicate and intricate question of parlia- 
mentary reform — it is to be remembered that Mr. 
Pitt advocated that measure at the outset of his 
career, and never abandoned the principle, al- 
though the events of his time were too well fitted 
to convince him of the inexpediency of making 
any farther attempts at carrying it into practice ; 
and it is also to be considered that Burns, in his 
humble and remote situation, was much more likely 
to seize right principles, than to judge of the safety 
or expediency of carrying them into eff'ect. 

The statement about the newspaper, refers to 
Mr. Perry of the Morning Chronicle, who, at the 
suggestion of Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, made the 
proposal referred to, and received for answer a 
letter which may be seen in the General Corres- 
pondence of our poet, and the tenor of which is 
in accordance with what Mr. Gray has said. Mr. 
Perry afterwards pressed Burns to settle in Lon- 
don as a regular writer for his paper, and the pc^t 
declined to do so, alledging that, however small, 
his excise appointment was a certainty, which, 
in justice to his family, he could not think of 
abandoning.* 

In conclusion. Burns' abstinence from the po- 
litical clubs, and affiliated societies of that disas- 
trous period, is a circumstance, the importance of 
which will be appreciated by all who know any 
thing of the machinery by which the real revolu- 
tionists of the era designed, and endeavored, to 
carry their purposes into execution. 

Burns, after the excise inquiry, took care, no 

then became Professor of Latin in the Institution at Belfast, 
and is now in holy orders, and a chaplain of the East India 
Coinpany in the presidency of Madras. 
* This is stated on tlie authority of Major Miller. 



ROBERT BURNS. 241 

iloubt, to avoid similar scrapes ; but he had no re- 
luctance to meddle largely and zealously in the 
squabbles of county politics and contested elec- 
tions ; and thus, by merely espousing, on all oc- 
casions, the cause of the whig candidates, kept 
up very effectually the spleen which the tories 
had originally conceived on tolerably legitimate 
grounds. Of his political verses, written at Dum- 
fries, hardly any specimens have as yet appeared 
in print ; it would be easy to give many of them, 
but perhaps some of the persons lashed and ridi- 
culed are still alive — theirchildrencertainly areso. 
One of the most celebrated of these effusions, 
and one of the most quotable, was written on a 
desperately contested election for the Dumfries 
district of boroughs, between Sir James Johnstone 
of Westerhall, and Mr. Miller, the younger, of Dal- 
svvinton ; Burns, of course, maintaining the cause 
of his patron's family. There is much humor in 

The Five Carlines. 

1. There were five carlines in the south, they fell upon a 

scheme, 
To send a lad to Lunnun town to bring- them tiding-s hame, 
Nor only bring them tidings hame, but do their erranda 

there, 
And aiblins gowd and honor baith might be that laddie's 

share. 

2. There was Maggy by the banks o' Nith,* a dame wi' 

pride enough, 
And Marjory o' the Monyloch8,t a carline auld and teugh ; 
And blirikin Bess o' Annandale,t that dwelt near Sol way- 
side, 
And whisky Jean that took her gill in Galloway sae wide ; § 
And black Joan frae Crichton Peel, II o' gipsy kith and kin, — 
Five wighter carlines war na foun' the south countrie within. 

* Dumfries. t Lochmaben. t Annan. 
§ Kirkcudbright. II Sanquhar. 



242 LIFE OF 

3. To send a lad to Lunnun town, they met upon a day, 
And mony a knig-ht and mony a laird their errand fain wad 

gae, 
But nae ane could their fancy please; O ne'ei' a ane but 
tway. 

4. The first he was a belted knig-ht,* bred o' a border clan, 
And he wad g"ae to Lunnun town, mig-ht nae man him with- 

stan', 
And he wad do their errands weel, and meikle he wad say, 
And ilka ane at Lunnun court would bid him g-udc day. 

5. The next came in a sodg-er youth,t and spak wi' modest 

g-race, 

And he wad g^ae to Lunnun town if sae their pleasure was ; 

He wadna hecht them courtly g^ifts, nor meikle speech pre- 
tend, 

But he wad hecht an honest heart, wad ne'er desert a friend. 

6. Now, wham to choose and wham refuse, at strife thir car- 

lines fell, 
For some had gentle folks to please, and some wad please 
themsell. 

7. Then out spak mim-mou'd Meg- o' Nith, and she spak up 

wi' pride, 

And she wad send the sodg-er youth, whatever mig-ht be- 
tide; 

For the auld g-uidman o' Lunnun t court she didna care a 
pin; 

But she wad send the sodg-er youth to g-reet his eldest 
son. § 

8. Then up sprang- Bess o' Annandale, and a deadly aith 

she's taen, 
That she wad vote the border knight, thoug-h she should vote 

her lane ; 
For far-aff fowls hae leathers fair, and fools o'chang-e are 

fain ; 
But I hae tried the border knight, and I'll try him yet 

again. 

9. Says black Joan frae Grichton Peel, a carline stoor and 

grim. 
The auld guidman, and the young guidman, for me may 

sink or swim ; 
For fools will freat o' right or wrang, while knaves laugh 

them to scorn ; 
But the sodger's friends hae blawn the best, so he shall bear 

the horn. 



* Sir J. Johnstone. t Major Miller. 

t George IIL § The Prince of Wales. 



ROBERT BURNS. 243 

10. Then whisky Jean spak ower her drink, Ye weel ken, 

kimmers a', 
Tho auld guidman o' Lunnun court,his back's been at the wa'; 
And mony a friend that kiss't his cup, is now a fremit wig-ht, 
But it's ne'er be said o' whisky Jean— I'll send the border 

knight. 

11. Then slow raise Marjory o' the Lochs, and wrinkled was 

her brow, 
Her ancient weed w£is russet gray, her auld Scots bluid was 

true; 
There's some great folks set light by me, — I set as light by 

them ; 
But I will sen' to Lunnun toun wham I like best at hame. 

12. Sae how this weighty plea may end. nae mortal wight 

can tell, 
God grant the king and ilka man may look weel to himsell." 

The above is far the best humored of these pro- 
ductions. The election to which it refers was 
carried in Major Miller's favor, but after a severe 
contest, and at a very heavy expense. 

These political conflicts were not to be mingled 
in with impunity by the chosen laureate, wit, and 
orator of the district. He himself, in an unpub- 
lished piece, speaks of the terror excited by 

" ■ Burns' venom, when 

He dips in gall unmix'd his eager pen, 

And pours his vengeance in the burning line ;" 

and represents his victims, on one of these elec- 
tioneering occasions, as leading a choral shout that 

" He for his heresies in church and state. 

Might richly merit Muir's and Palmer's fate." 

But what rendered him more and more the object 
of aversion to one set of people, was sure to con- 
nect him more and more strongly with the pas- 
sions,* and, unfortunately for himself and for us, 

♦ " Lord Frederick heard of all his youthful zeal, 
And felt as lords upon a canvas feel ; 



244 LIFE OF 

with the pleasures of the other ; and we have, 
among many confessions to the same purpose, the 
following, which I quote as the shortest, in one of 
the poet's letters from Dumfries to Mrs. Dunlop. 
" I am better, but not quite free of my complaint, 
(he refers to the palpitation of heart.) You must 
not think, as you seem to insinuate, that in my 
way of life, I want exercise. Of that I have 
enough ; but occasional hard drinking is the devil 
to me." He knew well what he was doing when- 
ever he mingled in such debaucheries : he had, 
long ere this, described himself as parting "with 
a slice of his constitution" every time he was 
guilty of such excess. 

This brings us back to a subject on which it can 
give no pleasure to expatiate. As has been al- 
ready sufficiently intimated, the statements of He- 
ron and Currie on this head, still more those of 
Mr. Walker and Dr. Irving, are not to be received 
without considerable deduction. No one of these 
biographers appears to have had any considerable 
intercourse with Burns during the latter years of 
life, which they have represented in such dark 
colors every way ; and the two survivors of their 
number are, I doubt not, among those who must 
have heard, with the highest satisfaction, the 
counter-statements which their narratives were 
the means of calling forth from men as well qua- 

He read the satire, and he saw the use, 

That such cool insult and such keen abuse 

Might on the wavering minds of voting- men produce. 

I much rejoice, he cried, such worth to find ; 

To this the world must be no longer blind. 

His glory will descend from sire to son, 

The Burns of English race, the happier Chatter ton. 



ROBERT BURNS. 245 

lified as themselves in point of character and at- 
tainment, and much more so in point of circum- 
stance and opportunity, to ascertain and estimate 
the real facts of a case, which is, at the best, a 
sufficiently melancholy one. 

"Dr. Currie," says Gilbert Burns,* "knowing 
the events of the latter years of my brother's life, 
only from the reports which had been propagated, 
and thinking it necessary, lest the candor of his 
work should be called in question, to state the 
substance of these reports, has given a very exag- 
gerated view of the failings of my brother's life at 
that period — which is certainly to be regretted." 

" I love Dr. Currie," says the Reverend James 
Gray, already more than once referred to, " but I 
love the memory of Burns more, and no considera- 
tion shall deter me from a bold declaration of the 
truth. The poet of the Coitar^s Saturday Night, 
who felt all the charms of the humble piety and 
virtue which he sung, is charged, (in Dr. Currie's 
Narrative,) with vices which would reduce him to 
a level with the most degraded of his species. 
As I knew him during that period of his life em- 
phatically called his evil days, / am enabled to 
speak from my own observation. It is not my in- 
tention to extenuate his errors, because they were 
combined with genius; on that account, they were 
only the more dangerous, because the more seduc- 
tive, and deserve the more severe reprehension ; 
but I shall likewise claim that nothing may be said 
in malice even against him. ... It came under 
my own view professionally, that he superintend- 
ed the education of his children with a degree of 
care that I have never seen surpassed by any pa- 

* Letter to Mr. Peterkin. (Peterkin's Preface, p. 82.) 



246 iiFE OP 

rent in any rank of life whatever. In the bosom 
of his family, he spent many a delightful hour in 
directing the studies of his eldest son, a boy of un- 
common talents. I have frequently found him ex- 
plaining to this youth, then not more than nine 
years of age, the English poets, from Shakspeare 
to Gray, or storing his mind with examples of he- 
roic virtue, as they live in the pages of our most 
celebrated English historians. I would ask any 
person of common candor, if employments like 
these are consistent with habitual drunkenness ? 

"It is not denied that he sometimes mingled with 
society unworthy of him. He was of a social and 
convivial nature. He was courted by all classes 
of men for the fascinating powers of his conversa- 
tion,but over his social scene tincontrolled passion 
never presided. Over the social bowl, his wit 
flashed for hours together, penetrating whatever it 
struck, like the fire from heaven ; but even in the 
hour of thoughtless gayety and merriment, I never 
knew it tainted by indecency. It was playful or 
caustic by turns, following an allusion through all 
its windings ; astonishing by its rapidity, or amu- 
sing by its wild originality, and grotesque, yet na- 
tural combinations, but never, within my observa- 
tion, disgusting by its grossness. In his morning 
houri, I never saw him like one suffering from the 
effects of last night's intemperance. He appeared 
then clear and unclouded. He was the eloquent 
advocate of humanity, justice, and political free- 
dom. From his paintings, virtue appeared more 
lovely, and piety assumed a more celestial mien. 
While his keen eye was pregnant with fancy and 
feeling, and his voice attuned to the very passion 
which he wished to communicate, it would hardly 
have been possible to conceive any being more in- 



EGBERT BURNS. 247 

teresting and delightful. I may likewise add, that 
to the very end of his life, reading was his favor- 
ite amusement. I have never known any man so 
intimately acquainted with the elegant English 
authors. He seemed to have the poets by heart. 
The prose authors he could quote either in their 
own words, or clothe their ideas in language more 
beautiful than their own. Nor was there ever 
any decay in any of the powers of his mind. To 
the last day of his life, his judgment, his memory, 
his imagination, were fresh and vigorous, as when 
he composed the Cottar^ s Saturday Night. The 
truth is, that Burns was seldom intoxicated. The 
drunkard soon becomes besotted, and is shunned 
even by the convivial. Had he been so, he could 
not long have continued the idol of every party. 
It will be freely confessed, that the hour of en- 
joyment was often prolonged beyond the limit 
marked by prudence ; but what man will venture 
to affirm, that in situations where he was con- 
scious of giving so much pleasure, he could at all 
times have listened to her voice ? 

" The men with whom he generally associated, 
were notof the lowest order. He numbered among 
his intimate friends, many of the most respecta- 
ble inhabitants of Dumfries and the vicinity. Se- 
veral of those were attached to him by ties that 
the hand of calumny, busy as it was, could never 
snap asunder. They admired the poet for his ge- 
nius, and loved the man for the candor, generosi- 
ty, and kindness of his nature. His early friends 
clung to him through good and bad report, with a 
zeal and fidelity that prove their disbelief of the 
malicious stories circulated to his disadvantage. 
Among them were some of the most distinguished 
characters in this country, and not a few females, 
21 



248 LIFE OF 

eminent for delicacy, taste, and genius. They 
were proud of his friendship, and cherished hinm 
to the last moment of his existence. He was en- 
deared to them even by his misfortunes, and they 
still retain for his memory that affectionate vene- 
ration which virtue alone inspires."* 

Part of Mr. Gray's letter is omitted, only be- 
cause it touches on subjects, as to which Mr. Find- 
later's statement must be considered as of not 
merely sufficient, but the very highest authority. 

" My connection with Robert Burns," says that 
most respectable man,f "commenced immediately 
after his admission into the excise, and continued 
to the hour of his death. J In all that time,the super- 
intendence of his behavior, as an officer of the re- 
venue, was a branch of my especial province, and 
it may be supposed I would not be an inattentive 
observer of the general conduct of a man and a 
poet, so celebrated by his countrymen. In the for- 
mer capacity, he was exemplary in his attention ; 
and was even jealous of the least imputation on his 
vigilance : as a proof of which, it may not be fo- 
reign to the subject to quote a part of a letter fron^ 
him to myself, in a case of on\y seemingm^Xien\\on . 
* I know, sir, and regret deeply, that this business 
glances with a malign aspect on my character as 
an officer ; but, as I am really innocent in the af- 
fair, and as the gentleman is known to be an illicit 
dealer,and particularly as this is the single instance 
of the least shadow of carelessness or impropriety 
in my conduct as an officer, I shall be peculiarly 
unfortunate if my character shall fall a sacrifice to 
the dark manoeuvres of a smuggler.' — This of itself 

* Letter in Mr. Peterkin's preface, pp. 93—95. 
tibid. p. 93-96. 

tMr. Findlater watched by Burns the night before he 
died. 



ROBERT BURNS. 249 

affords more than a presumption of his attention 
to business, as it cannot be supposed he would 
have written in such a style to me, but from the 
impulse of a conscious rectitude in this depart- 
ment of his duty. Indeed it was not till near the lat- 
ter end of his days that there was any falling off in 
this respect ; and this was amply accounted for 
in the pressure of disease and accumulating infir- 
mities. I will further avow, that I never saw him, 
which was very frequently while he lived at El- 
liesland, and still nore so, almost every day, after 
he removed to Du.-nfries, but in hours of business 
he was quite himself, and capable of discharging 
the duties of his office : nor was he ever known to 
drink by himself, or seen to indulge in the use of 
liquor in a forenoon. . . I have seen Burns in all 
his various phases, in his convivial moments, in 
his sober moods, and in the bosom of his family ; 
indeed, I believe I savv^ more of him than any other 
individual had occasion to see, after he became an 
excise officer, and I never beheld any thing like 
the gross enormities with which he is now charged: 
That when set down in an evening with a few 
friends whom he liked, he was apt to prolong the 
social hour beyond the bounds which prudence 
would dictate, is unquestionable ; but in his family, 
I will venture to say, he vv^as never seen otherwise 
than attentive and affectionate to a high degree." 
These statements are entitled to every conside- 
ration : they come from men altogether incapa- 
ble, for any purpose, of wilfully stating that which 
they know to bo untrue. Yet we are not, on the 
other hand, to throw out of view altogether the 
feelings of partial friendship, irritated by exagge- 
rations such as called forth these testimonies. It 
is scarcely to be doubted that Dr. Currie and Pro. 



250 LIFE OF 

fessor Walker took care, ere they penned their 
painful pages, to converse and correspond with 
other persons than the enemies of the deceased 
poet — Here, then, as in most oiher cases of simi- 
lar controversy, the fair and equitable conclusion 
would seem to be, " truth lies between." 

To whatever Burns' excesses amounted, they 
were, it is obvious, and that frequently, the subject 
of rebuke and remonstrance eren from his own 
dearest friends — even from mea who had no sort 
of objection to potations deep enough in all con- 
science. That such reprimands, giving shape and 
form to the thoughts that tortured his own bosom, 
should have been received at times with a strange 
mixture of remorse and indignation,none that have 
considered the nervous susceptibility and haughti- 
ness of Burns' character can hear with surprise. 
But this was only when the good advice was oral.* 

♦ A statement, of an isolated character, in the Quarterly 
Review, (No. 1 .) has been noticed at much length, and in very- 
intemperate lang-uag-e, by Mr. Peterkin, in the preface from 
which the above letters of Messrs. Gray and Findlater are 
extracted. I am sure that nothing- could have been further 
from the writer's wishes than to represent any thing- to Burns' 
disadvantage; but the reader shall judge for himself. The 
passage in the critique alluded to is as follows : " Bred a 
peasant, and preferred to the degrading situation of a com- 
mon exciseman, neither the influence of the low-minded crew 
around him, nor the gratification of selfish indulgence, nor 
that contempt of futurity which has characterized so many 
of his poetical brethren, ever led him to incur or endure the 
burden of pecuniary obligation. A very intimate friend of 
the poet, from whom he used occasionally to borrow a small 
sum for a week or two, once ventured to hint that the punc- 
tuality with which the loan was always replaced at the ap- 
pointed time was unnecessary and unkind. The conse- 
quence of this hint was, the interruption of their friendship 
for some weeks, the bard disdaining the very thought of 
being indebted to a human being one farthing beyond what 



ROBERT RURNS. 251 

No one knew better than he how to answer the 
written homiUes of such persons as were most 
likely to take the freedom of admonishing him on 

he could discharge with the most rigid punctuality. It was 
a less pleasing consequence of this high spirit, that Burns 
was inaccessible to all friendly advice. To lay before him 
his errors, or to point out their consequences, was to touch a 
string that jarred every feeling within him. On such occa- 
sions his, like Churchill's, was 



'The mind which starting heaves the heartfelt groan, 
And hates the form she knows to be her own.' 



"It is a dreadful truth, that when racked and tortured by 
the well-meant and warm expostulations of an intimate 
friend, he started up in a paroxysm of frenzy, and drawing a 
sword-cane which he usually wore, made an attempt to 
plunge it into the body of his adviser — the next instant he 
was with difficulty withheld from suicide."* 

In reply to this paragraph, Mr. Peterkin says,t " The 
friend here referred to, Mr. John Syme, in a written state- 
ment now before us, gives an account of this murderous-look- 
ing story, which we shall transcribe verbativi; that the na- 
ture of this attempt may be precisely known. 'In my parlor 
at Ryedale, one afternoon, Burns and I were wery gracious 
and confidential. I did advise him to be temperate in all 
things. 1 might have spoken daggers, but I did not mean 
them. He shook to the inmost fibre of his frame, and drew 
ike sword-cane, when! exclaimed, 'What! wilt thou thus, 
and in my own house T The poor fellow was so stung with 
remorse, that he dashed himself down on the floor.' — And this 
is gravely laid before the world at second-hand, as an attempt 
by Burns to murder a friend, and to commit suicide, from 
which 'he was with difficulty withheld !' So much for the 
manner of telling a story. The whole amount of it, by Mr. 
Syme's account, and none else can be correct, seems to be, 
that being ' gracious' one afternoon, (perhaps a Itttle ' glori- 
ous' too, according to Tarn o' Shanter,) he, in his own house, 
thought fit to give Burns a lecture on temperance in all 
things; in the course of which he acknowledges that he 
* might have spoken daggers' — and that Burns, in a moment 

♦ (Quarterly Review. No. I. p. 28. 
t Peterkin' s Preface, p. 65. 

21* 



252 LIFE OF 

points of such delicacy ; nor is there any thing in 
all his correspondence more amusing than his re- 
ply to a certain solemn lecture of William Nicoll, 

of irritation, perhaps of justly offended pride, merely drew 
the sword (which, like every other excise-officer, he wore at 
all times professionally in a staff,) in order, as a soldier would 
touch his sword, to repel indig-nity. But by Mr. Syme's own 
testimony, Burns only drew the sword from the cane : no- 
thing- is said of an attempt to stab ; but on the contrary, Mr. 
Mr. Syme declares expressly that a raock-solemn exclamfia- 
tion, pretty characteristic, we suspect, of the whole affair, 
wound up the catastrophe of this tragical scene. Really it is 
a foolish piece of business to magnify such an incident into 
a 'dreadful truth,' illustrative of the ' untamed and plebian' 
spirit of Burns. We cannot help regretting that Mr. Syme 
should unguardedly have communicated such an anecdote 
to any of his friends, considering that this ebullition of mo- 
mentary irritation was followed, as he himself states, by a 
friendship more ardent than ever betwixt him and Burns. 
He should have been aware, that the story, when told again 
and again by others, would be twisted and tortured into the 
scandalous form which it at last assumed in the (Quarterly 
Review. The antics of a good man in the delirium of a fe- 
ver, might with equal propriety be narrated in blank verse, 
as a proof that he was a bad man when in perfect health. A 
momentary gust of passion, excited by acknowledged pro- 
vocation, and followed by nothing but drawing or brandish- 
ing a weapon accidentally in his hand, and an immediate 
and strong conviction that even this was a great error, can- 
not, without the most outrageous violence of construction, 
be tortured into an attempt to commit murder and suicide. 
All the artifice of language, too, is used to give a horrible 
impression of Burns. The sword-cane is spoken of with- 
out explanation as a thing ' which he usually wore,' — as if 
he had habitually carried the concealed stiletto of an assas- 
sin: The reviewer ehould have been much more on his 
guard." 

The reader may probably be of opinion, upon candidly 
considering and comparing the statements of the reviewer 
and the re-reviewer ; — 1st, That the facts of the case are in 
the two stories substantially the same ; 2dly, That when the 
reviewer spoke of Burns' sword-cane as a weapon which he 
"usually wore," he did mean " which he wore in 7m capa- 
city of ea-aseman;" 3dly, That Mr. Syme ought never to 
have told the story, nor the reviewer to have publi^ed it, nor 



ROBERT BURNS. 253 

the same exemplary schoolmaster who " brewed 
the peck o' maut which 

Rob and Allan came to pree." 

,.."0 thou, wisest among the wise, meridian 
blaze of prudence, full moon of discretion, and 
chief of many counsellors ! how infinitely is 
thy puddle-headed, rattle-headed, wrong-headed, 
round-headed slave indebted to thy supereminent 
goodness, that from the luminous path of thy own 
right-lined rectitude thou lookest benignly down 
on an erring wretch, of whom the zig-zag wan- 
derings defy all the powers of calculation, from 
the simple copulation of units, up to the hidden 
mysteries of fluxions ! May one feeble ray of that 
light of wisdom which darts from thy sensorium, 
straight as the arrow of heaven, and bright as the 
meteor of inspiration, may it be my portion, so 
that I may be less unworthy of the face and fa- 
vor of that father of proverbs and master of max- 
ims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among 
the sages, the wise and witty Willy NicoU ! 
Amen ! amen! Yea, so be it ! 

"For me ! I am a beast, a reptile, and know 
nothing !" &c. &c. &;c. 

To how many that have moralized over the life 
and death of Burns, might not such a Tu quoque 
be addressed ! 



the re-reviewer to have g-iven it additional importance by 
his attempt to explain into nothing- what in reality amounted 
to little. Burns was, according- to Mr. Peterkin's story, 
"glorious" at the time when the incident occurred ; and if 
there was no harm at all in what he did in that moment of 
unfortunate excitement and irritation, what means Mr. 
Syme's own lang'uage about " the poor fellow being stung' 
with remorse ?" &c. 



254 LIFE OF 

The strongest argument in favor of those who 
denounce the statements of Heron, Currie, and 
their fellow-biographers, concerning the habits of 
the poet, during the latter j^ears of his career, as 
culpably and egregiously exaggerated, still remains 
to be considered. On the whole, Burns gave sa- 
tisfaction by his manner of executing the duties of 
his station in the revenue service ; he, moreover, 
as Mr. Gray tells us, (and upon this ground Mr. 
Gray could not possibly be mistaken,) took a lively 
interest in the education of his children, and spent 
more hours in their private tuition than fathers who 
have more leisure than his excisemanship left him, 
are often in the custom of so bestowing ;* and 

* "He was a kind and attentive father, and took great de- 
lig-ht in spending- his evenings in the cultivation of the 
minds of his children. Their education was the g-rand ob- 
ject of his life, and he did not, like most parents, think it 
sufficient to send them to public schools ; he was their pri- 
vate instructor, and even at that early age, bestowed great 
pains in training their minds to habits of thought and reflec- 
tion, and in keeping them pure from every form of vice. 
This he considered as a sacred duty, and never, to the period 
of his last illness, relaxed in his diligence. With his eldest 
son, a boy of not more than nine years of age, he had read 
many of the favorite poets, and some of the best historians 
in our language ; and what is more remarkable, gave him 
considerable aid in the study of Latin. This boy attended 
the grammar school of Dumfries, and soon attracted my 
notice by the strength of his talent, and the ardor of his 
ambition. Before he had been a year at school, I thought it 
right to advance him a form, and he began to read Caesar, 
and gave me translations of that author of such beauty as I 
confess surprised me. On inquiry, I found that his father 
made him turn over his dictionary, till he was able to trans- 
late to him the passage in such a way that he could gather 
the author's meaning, and that it was to him he owed that 
polished and forcible English with which I was so greatly 
struck. I have mentioned this incident merely to show 
what minute attention he paid to this important branch 
of parental duty." — Letter from the Reverend James Gray 



BOBERT BUKNS. 255 

lastly, although he to all men's regret executed, 
after his removal to Dumfries. shire, no more than 
one poetical piece of considerable length, ( Tam o' 
Shanter,) his epistolary correspondence, and his 
songs contributed to Johnson's Museum, and to 
the great collection of Mr. George Thomson, fur- 
nish undeniable proof that, in whatever fits of dis- 
sipation he unhappily indulged, he never could 
possibly have sunk into any thing like that habi- 
tual grossness of manners and sottish degradation 
of mind, which the writers in question have not 
hesitated to hold up to the deepest commiseration, 
if not more than this, of mankind. 

Of his letters written at Elliesland and Dum- 
fries, nearly three octavo volumes have been al- 
ready printed by Currie and Cromek ; and it 
would be easy to swell the collection to double 
this extent. Enough, however, has been published 
to enable every reader to judge for himself of the 
character of Burns' style of epistolary composi- 
tion. The severest criticism bestowed on it has 
been, that it is too elaborate — that, however na- 
tural the feelings, the expression is frequently- 
more studied and artificial than belongs to that 
species of composition. Be this remark altoge- 
ther just in point of taste, or otherwise, the fact 
on which it is founded, furnishes strength to our 
present position. The poet produced in these 
years a great body of elaborate prose-writing. 

We have already had occasion to notice some 
of his contributions to Johnson's Museum. He 
continued to the last month of his life, to take a 
lively interest in that work ; and besides writing 
for it some dozens of excellent original songs, his 

to Mr. Gilbert Burns. See his edition, vol. I. Appendix, 
No. V. 



256 LIFE OF 

diligence in collecting ancient pieces hitherto un- 
published, and his taste and skill in eking out 
fragments, were largely, and most happily exert- 
ed, all along, for its benefit. Mr. Cromek saw 
among Johnson's papers, no fewer than 184 of 
the pieces which enter into the collection, in 
Burns' handwriting.* 

His connection with the more important work 
of Mr. Thomson commenced in September 1792 ; 
and Mr. Gray justly says, that whoever considers 
his correspondence with the editor, and the col- 
lection itself, must be satisfied, that from that time 
till the commencement of his last illness, not 
many days ever passed over his head without the 
production of some new stanzas for its pages. 
Besides old materials, for the most part embel- 
lished with lines, if not verses of his own, and a 
whole body of hints, suggestions, and criticisms, 
Burns gave Mr. Thomson about sixty original 
songs. It is, however, but justice to poor Heron 
to add, that comparatively few of this number had 
been made public at the time when he drew up 
that rash and sweeping statement, which Dr. 
Currie adhered to in some particulars without 
sufficient inquiry. 

The songs in this collection are by many emi- 
nent critics placed decidedly at the head of all our 
poet's performances : it is by none disputed that 
very many of them are worthy of his most felici- 
tous inspiration. He bestowed much more care 
on them than on his contributions to the Museum ; 
and the taste and feeling of the editor secured the 
work against any intrusions of that over-warm ele- 
ment which was too apt to mingle in his amatory 
effusions. Burns knew that he was now engaged 
♦ Reliques, p. 185. 



ROBERT BURNS. 257 

on a work destined for the eye and ear of refine- 
ment ; he labored throughout, under the salutary- 
feeling, "virginibus, puerisque canto ;" and the 
consequences have been happy indeed for his 
own fame — for the literary taste, and the national 
music, of Scotland ; and, what is of far higher 
importance, the moral and national feelings of 
his countrymen. 

In almost all these productions — certainly in all 
that deserve to be placed in the first rank of his 
compositions — Burns made use of his native dia- 
lect. He did so, too, in opposition to the advice of 
almost all the lettered correspondents he had — 
more especially of Dr. Moore, who, in his own no- 
vels, never ventured on more than a few casual spe- 
cimens of Scottish colloquy — following therein the 
example of his illustrious predecessor Smollett ; 
and not foreseeing that a triumph over English 
prejudice, which Smollett might have achieved, 
had he pleased to make the effort, was destined 
to be the prize of Burns' perseverance in obeying 
the dictates of native taste and judgment. Our 
poet received such suggestions, for the most part, 
in silence — not choosing to argue with others on 
a matter which concerned only his own feelings ; 
but in writing to Mr. Thomson, he had no occa- 
sion either to conceal or disguise his sentiments. 
" These English songs," says he, " gravel me to 
death. I have not that command of the language 
that I have of my native tongue;"* and again, "so 
much for namby-pamby. I may, after all, try my 
hand at it in Scots verse. There I am always most 
at home."f — He, besides, would have considered 



* Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 111. 
t Ibid. p. 80. 



258 LIFE OF 

it as a sort of national crime to do any thing that 
musttend to divorce the music of his nativelandfrom 
her peculiar idiom. The "genius loci" was never 
worshiped more fervently than by Burns. " I am 
such an enthusiast," says he, "that in the course 
of my several perigrinations through Scotland, I 
made a pilgrimage to the individual spot from 
which every song took its rise, Lochaher and the 
Braes of Ballenden excepted. So far as the lo- 
cality, either from the title of the air or the tenor of 
the song, could be ascertained, I have paid my de- 
votions at the particular shrine of every Scottish 
Muse." With such feelings, he was not likely to 
touch with an irreverent hand the old fabric of our 
national song, or to meditate a lyrical revolution 
for the pleasure ofstrangers. " There is,"sayshe,* 
" a naivete, a pastoral simplicity in a slight inter- 
mixture of Scots words and phraseology, which is 
more in unison (at least to my taste, and I will add, 
to every genuine Caledonian taste) with the sim- 
ple pathos or rustic sprightliness of our native mu- 
sic, than any English verses whatever. One hint 
more let me give you. — Whatever Mr.Pleyel does, 
let him not alter onezoto of the original airs; I mean 
in the songdepartment ; but let our Scottish nation- 
al music preserve its native features. They are, I 
own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more 
modern rules ; but on that very eccentricity, per- 
haps, depends a great part of their effect."f 



* Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 38. 

t It may amuse the reader to hear, that in epite of all 
Burns' success in the use of his native dialect, even an emi- 
nently spirited bookseller to whom the manuscript of Wa- 
verley was submitted, hesitated for some time about publish- 
ing- it, on account of the Scots dialogue interwoven in the 
novel. 



ROBERT BURNS. 259 

Of the delight with which Burns labored for Mr. 
Thomson's Collection, his letters contain some 
lively descriptions. " You cannot imagine," says 
he, 7th April, 1793, "how much this business has 
added to my enjoyments. What with my early 
attachment to ballads, your book and ballad-ma- 
king are now as completely my hobbyhorse as ever 
fortification was Uncle Toby's ; so I'll e'en can- 
ter it away till I come to the limit of my race, 
(God grant I may take the right side of the win- 
ning-post,) and then, cheerfully looking back on 
the honest folks with whom I have been happy, I 
shall say or sing, * Sae merry as we a' hae been,' 
and raising my last looks to the whole human race, 
the last words of the voice of Coila shall be ' Good 
night, and joy be wi' you a.'* 

" Until I am complete master of a tune in my 
own singing, such as it is, I can never,"says Burns, 
*' compose for it. My way is this. I consider the 
poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the 
musical expression — then choose my theme — com- 
pose one stanza. When that is composed, which 
is generally the most difficult part of the business, 
I walk out, — sit down now and then, — look out for 
objects in nature round me that are in unison or 
harmony with the cogitations of my fancy, and 
workings of my bosom, — humming every now and 
then the air, with the verses I have framed. When 
I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the 
solitary fireside of my study, there commit my 
effusions to paper ; swinging at intervals on the 
hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth 
my own critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seri- 
ously, his, at home, is almost invariably my way. 
— What nursed egotism !"f 

* Correspondence with Mr. Thomsoti, p. 57. 
t Ibid, p. 119. 

22 



260 LIFE OF 

In this correspondence with Mr. Thomson, and 
in Cromek's later pubhcation, the reader will find 
a world of interesting details about the particular 
circumstances under which these immortal songs 
were severally written. They are all, or almost 
all, in fact, part and parcel of the poet's personal 
history. No man ever made his muse more com- 
pletely the companion of his own individual life. 
A new flood of light has just been poured on the 
same subject, in Mr. Allan Cunningham's " Col- 
lection of ScottishSongs;"unless, therefore, I were 
to transcribe volumes, and all popular volumes too, 
it is impossible to go into the details of this part of 
the poet's history. The reader must be contented 
with a few general memoranda ; e. g. 

" Do you think that the sober gin-horse routine 
of existence could inspire a man with life, and 
love, and joy — could fire him with enthusiasm, or 
melt him with pathos equal to the genius of your 
book? No, no. Whenever I want to be more than 
ordinary in song — to be in some degree equal to 
your divine airs — do you imagine I fast and pray 
for the celestial emanation 1 Tout au contraire. I 
have a glorious recipe, the very one that for his 
own use was invented by the divinity of healing 
and poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of 
Admetus, — I put myself on a regimen of admiring 
a fine woman."* 

" I can assure you I was never more in earnests 
— Conjugal love is a passion which I deeply feel, 
and highly venerate ; but, somehow it does not 
make such a figure in poesy as that other species, 
of the passion, 

'' Where love is liberty, and nature law.'' 
* Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 174. 



ROBERT BURNS. 261 

Musically speaking, the first is an instrument, of 
which the gamut is scanty and confined, but the 
tones inexpressibly sweet; while the last has pow- 
ers equal to all the intellectual moduhitions of the 
human soul. Still I am a very poet in my enthu- 
siasm of the passion. The welfare and happiness 
of the beloved object is the first and inviohite sen- 
timent that pervades my soul ; and — whatever 
pleasures I might wish for, or whatever raptures 
they might give me — yet, if they interfere with 
that first principle, it is having these pleasures at 
a dishonest price ; and justice forbids, and gene- 
rosity disdains the purchase."* — So says Burns 
in introducing to Mr. Thomson's notice one of his 
many songs in celebration of the Lassie wV the 
lint-white locks. " The beauty of Chloris," says, 
nevertheless, Allan Cunningham, " has added 
many charms to Scottish song ; but that which 
has increased the reputation of the poet, has les- 
sened that of the man. Chloris was one of those 
who believe in the dispensing power of beauty, 
and thought that love should be under no demure 
restraint. Burns sometimes thought in the same 
way himself; and it is not wonderful, therefore, 
that the poet should celebrate the charms of a li- 
beral beauty who was willing to reward his strains 
and who gave him many opportunities of catch- 
ing inspiration from her presence." And in a 
note on the ballad which terminates with the de- 
licious stanza : 

" Let others love the city, and g-audy show at svimmcrnoon, 
Gie me the lonely valley, the dewy eve, and rising- moon, 
Fair beaming- and streaming her silver light the boughs 

amang; 
While falling, recalling, the amorous thrush concludes her 

Bang; 

» Correspondence -ttuth Mr. Thomson, p. 191. 



262 LIFE OF 

There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove, by wimpling* burn 

and leafy shaw, 
And hear my vows o' truth and love, and say thou lo'es me 

best of a' V* 

The same commentator adds — " Such is the glow- 
ing picture which the poet gives of youth, and 
health, and voluptuous beauty ; but let no lady 
envy the poetical elevation of poor Chloris ; her 
situation in poetry is splendid — her situation in 
life merits our pity — perhaps our charity." 

Of all Burns' love songs, the best, in his own 
opinion, was that which begins, 

" Yestreen I had a pint o' wine, 
A place where body saw na'." 

Mr. Cunningham says, " if the poet thought so, I 
am sorry for it ;" while the Reverend Hamilton 
Paul fully concurs in the author's own estimate of 
the performance. "I believe, however," says 
Cunningham, " Annawi^ the gowden locks was no 
imaginary person. Like the dame in the old song. 
She brewed gude ale for gentlemen ; and while she 
served the bard with a pint of wine, allowed her 
customer leisure to admire her, * as hostler wives 
should do.' " 

There is in the same collection a love song, 
which unites the suffrages, and ever will do so, 
of all men. It has furnished Byron with a mot- 
to, and Scott has said that that motto is " worth 
a thousand romances." 

" Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met,— or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 

The " Nancy" of this moving strain was, ac- 



ROBERT BURNS. 263 

cording to Cunningham, another fair and some- 
what frail dame of Dumfries-shire.* 

I envy no one the task of inquiring minutely in 
how far these traditions, for such unquestionably 
they are, and faithfully conveyed by Allan Cun- 
ningham, rest on the foundation of truth. They re- 
fer at worst to occasional errors. " Many insinua- 
tions," says Mr. Gray, " have been made against 
the poet's character as a husband, but without the 
slightest proof; and I might pass from the charge 
with that neglect which it merits ; but I am happy 
to say thati have in exculpation the direct evidence 
of Mrs. Burns herself, who, among many amiable 
and respectable qualities, ranks a veneration for 
the memory of her departed husband, whom she 
never names but in terms of the profoundest re- 
spect and the deepest regret, to lament his mis- 
fortunes, or to extol his kindnesses to herself, not 
as the momentary overflowings of the heart in a 
season of penitence for offences generously for- 
given, but an habitual tenderness, which ended 
only with his life. I place this evidence, which I 
am proud to bring forward on her own authority, 
against a thousand anonymous calumnies. "f 

Among the effusions, not amatory, which Burns 
contributed to Mr. Thomson's Collection, the fa- 
mous song of Bannockburn holds the first place. 
We have already seen in how lively a manner 
Burns' feelings were kindled when he visited that 
glorious field. According to tradition, the tune 
played when Bruce led his troops to the charge, 
was " Hey tuttie tattie ;" and it was humming this 
old air as he rode by himself through Glenken in 

* Cunningham's Scottish Song's, vol. iv. p. 178. 

t Letter in Gilbert Burns' edition, vol. 1. app. v. p. 437. 

22* 



264 I-IFE OF 

Galloway, during a terrific storm of wind and 
rain, that the poet composed his immortal lyric in 
its first and noblest form.* This is one more in- 
stance of his delight in the sterner aspects of na- 
ture. 

" Come, winter, with thine angry howl, 
And raging- bend the naked tree — " 

"There is hardly," says he in one of his letters, 
"there is scarcely any earthly object gives me 
more — I do not know if I should call it pleasure — 
but something which exalts me, something which 
enraptures me — than to walk in the sheltered side 
of a wood in a cleudy winter day, and hear the 
stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving 
over the plain. It is my best season for devo- 
tion : my mind is wrapt up in a kind of enthusi- 
asm to Him, who, in the pompous language of the 
Hebrew Bard, * walks on the wings of the wind.' " 
When Burns entered a druidical circle of stones 
on a dreary moor, he has already told us that his 
first movement was "to say his prayers." His 
best poetry was to the last produced amidst 
scenes of solemn desolation. 

* The last line of each stanza was subsequently lengthen- 
ed and weakened, in order to suit the tune of Lewie Gordon, 
which Mr. Thomson preferred to Hey tuttie tattie. I may 
add, however, what is well known to all lovers of Burns, and 
of Scottish music, that almost immediately after having pre- 
vailed on the poet to make this alteration, Mr. Thomson saw 
his error, and discarded both the change and the air which 
it was made to suit. The original air, and the original 
words, are now united forever. 



KOBERT BURNS. 2G5 



CHAPTER IX. 



" 1 dread thee, Fate, relentless and severe, 
With all a poet's, hu&band's, father's fear." 

We are drawing near the close of this great 
poet's mortal career ; and I would fain hope the 
details of the last chapter may have prepared the 
humane reader to contemplate it with sentiments 
of sorrow, pure comparatively, and undebased 
with any considerable intermixture of less genial 
feelings. 

For some years before Burns was lost to his 
country, it is sufficiently plain that he had been, 
on political grounds, an object of suspicion and 
distrust to a large portion of the population that 
had most opportunity of observing him. The mean 
subalterns of party had, it is very easy to suppose, 
delighted in decrying him, on pretexts, good, bad, 
and indifferent, equally — to their superiors ; and 
hence, who will not willingly believe it ? the tem- 
porary and local prevalence of those extravagant- 
ly injurious reports, the essence of which Dr. 
Currie, no doubt, thought it his duty, as a biogra- 
pher, to extract and circulate. 

The untimely death of one who, had he lived 
to any thing like the usual term of human exist- 
ence, might have done so much to increase his 
fame as a poet, and to purify and dignify his cha- 
racter as a man, was, it is too probable, hastened 
by his own intemperances and imprudences : but 
it seems to be extremely improbable, that, even if 



266 LIFE OF 

his manhood had been a course of saintlike virtue 
in all respects, the irritable and nervous bodily- 
constitution which he inherited from his father, 
shaken as it was by the toils and miseries of his 
ill-starred youth,could have sustained, to any thing 
like the psalmist's " alloted span," the exhausting 
excitements of an intensely poetical temperament. 
Since the first pages of this narrative were sent to 
the press, I have heard from an old acquaintance of 
the bard, who often shared his bed with him at 
Mossgiel, that even at that early period, when in- 
temperance assuredly had had nothing to do with 
the matter, those ominous symptoms of radical 
disorder in the digestive system, the " palpitation 
and suffocation" of which Gilbert speaks, were so 
regularly his nocturnal visitants, that it was his 
custom to have a great tub of cold water by his 
bedside, into which he usually plunged more than 
once in the course of the night, thereby procuring 
instant, though but shortlived relief. On a frame 
thus originally constructed, and thus early tried 
with most severe afflictions, external and internal, 
what must not have been, under any subsequent 
course of circumstances, the effect of that exqui- 
site sensibility of mind, but for which the world 
would never have heard any thing either of the 
sins, or the sorrows, or the poetry of Burns ! 

"The fates and characters of the rhyming tribe," 
thus writes the poet himself to Miss Chalmers in 
1793, " often employ my thoughts when I am dis- 
posed to be melancholy. There is not, among all 
the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful 
a narrative as the lives of the poets. — In the com- 
parative view of wretches, the criterion is not what 
they are doomed to suffer, but how they are form- 
ed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a 



ROBERT BURNS. 267 

stronger imagination and a more delicate sensi- 
bility, which between them will ever engender a 
more ungovernable set of passions, than are the 
usual lot of man ; implant in him an irresistible 
impulse to some idle vagary, such as, arranging 
wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the 
grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, 
watching the frisks of the little minnows in the 
sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of but- 
terflies — in short, send him adrift after some pur- 
suit which shall eternally mislead him from the 
paths of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener 
relish than any man living for the pleasures that 
lucre can purchase ; lastly, fill up the measure of 
his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of 
his own dignity, and you have created a wight 
nearly as miserable as a poet." In these few 
short sentences, as it appears to me, Burns has 
traced his own character far better than any one 
else has done it since. — But with this lot what 
pleasures were not mingled ? — " To you, madam," 
he proceeds, " I need not recount the fairy plea- 
sures the muse bestows to counterbalance this 
catalogue of evils. Bewitching poetry is like 
bewitching woman ; she has in all ages been ac- 
cused of misleading mankind from the counsels 
of wisdom and the paths of prudence, involving 
them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, 
branding them with infamy, and plunging them 
in the whirling vortex of ruin ; yet, where is the 
man but must own that all our happiness on earth 
is not worthy the name — that even the holy her- 
mit's solitary prospect of paradisiacal bliss is but 
the glitter of a northern sun, rising over a frozen 
region, compared with the many pleasures, the 
nameless raptures, that we owe to the lovely 
queen of the heart of man !" 



268 LIFE OF 

" What is a poet ?" asks one well qualified to 
answer his own question. " He is a man en- 
dowed with more lively sensibility, more enthu- 
siasm and tenderness, who has a greater know- 
ledge of human nature, and a more comprehen- 
sive soul, than are supposed to be common 
among mankind ; a man pleased with his own 
passions and volitions, and who rejoices more 
than other men in the spirit of life that is in him ; 
delighting to contemplate similar volitions and 
passions as manifested in the goings-on of the 
universe, and habitually impelled to create them 
where he does not find them. To these qualities 
he has added a disposition to be affected, more 
than other men, by absent things, as if they were 
present ; an ability of conjuring up in himself 
passions which are far indeed from being the 
same as those produced by real events, yet (espe- 
cially in those parts of the general sympathy which 
are pleasing and deUghtfui) do morenearly resem- 
ble the passions produced by real events than any- 
thing which, from the motions of their own minds 
merely, other men are accustomed to feel in them- 
selves."* So says one of the rare beings who 
have been able to sustain and enjoy, through a 
long term of human years, the tear and wear of 
sensibilities thus quickened and refined beyond 
what fails to the lot of the ordinary brothers of 
their race — feeling more than others can dream 
of feeling, the joys and the sorrows that come to 
them as individuals, and filling up all those blanks 
which io largely interrupt the agitations of com- 
mon bosoms — with the almost equally agitating 
sympathies of an imagination to which repose 
would be death. It is common to say of those 
who over-indulge themselves in material stimu. 

* Preface to the second edition of Wordsworth's Poems, 



ROBERT BURNS. 269 

lants, that they live fast ; what wonder that the 
career of the poet's thick-coming fancies should, 
in the immense majority of cases, be rapid too ? 

That Burns /jw^jftts^jin both senses of the phrase, 
we have abundant evidence from himself; and that 
the more earthly motion was somewhat accelerated 
as it approached the close, we may believe, with- 
out finding it at all necessary to mingle anger with 
our sorrow. " Even in his earliest poems," as Mr. 
Wordsworth says, in a beautiful passage of his 
letter to Mr. Gray, " through the veil of assumed 
habits and pretended qualities, enough of the real 
man appears to show that he was conscious of suf- 
ficient cause to dread his own passions, and to be- 
wail his errors ! We have rejected as false some- 
times in the letter, and of necessity as false in the 
spirit, many of the testimonies that others have 
borne against him : — but, by his own hand — in 
words the import of which cannot be mistaken — 
it has been recorded that the order of his life but 
faintly corresponded with the clearness of his 
views. It is probable that he would have proved 
a still greater poet, if, by strength of reason, he 
could have controlled the propensities which his 
sensibility engendered ; but he would have been 
a poet of a different class : and certain it is, had 
that desirable restraint been early established, 
many peculiar beauties which enrich his verses 
could never have existed, and many accessary in- 
fluences, which contribute greatly to their efl^ect, 
would have been wanting. For instance, the 
momentous truth of the passage — 

"One point must still be greatly dark," &c * 

* "Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still g-entlier sister woman — 
Tho' they may gang a kennin' wrang ; 

To step aside is human : 



270 LIFE OF 

could not possibly have been conveyed with such 
pathetic force by any poet that ever lived, speak- 
ing in his own voice ; unless it were felt that, like 
Burns, he was a man who preached from the text 
of his own errors ; and whose wisdom, beautiful as 
a flower that might have risen from seed sown 
from above, was in fact a scion from the root of 
personal suffering. Whom did the poet intend 
should be thought of as occupying that grave over 
which, after modestly setting forth the moral dis- 
cernment and warm afiections of its ' poor inha- 
bitant,' it is supposed to be inscribed that 



' Thoughtless follies laid him low, 

And stain'd hie name V 

Who but himself, — himself anticipating the too 
probable termination of his own course ? Here is 
a sincere and solemn avowal — a public declara- 
tion from his own will — a confession at once de- 
vout, poetical, and human — a history in the shape 
of a prophecy ! What more was required of the 
biographer than to put his seal to the writing, 
testifying that the forboding had been realized, 
and that the record was authentic ?" 

In how far the " thoughtless follies " of the poet 
did actually hasten his end, it is needless to con- 
jecture. They had their share, unquestionably, 
along with other influences which it would be in- 
human to characterize as mere follies — such, for 
example, as that general depression of spirits, 
which haunted him from his youth, and, in all 
likelihood, sat more heavily on such a being as 
Burns than a man of plain common sense might 

One point must still be greatlj^dark, 

The moving why they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark, 

How far perhaps they rue it." 



ROBERT BURNS. 271 

guess, — or even a casual expression of discou- 
raging tendency from the persons on whose good 
will all hopes of substantial advancement in the 
scale of worldly promotion depended, — or that 
partial exclusion from the species of society our 
poet had been accustomed to adorn and delight, 
which, from however inadequate causes, certainly 
did occur during some of the latter years of his 
life. — All such sorrows as these must have acted 
with twofold harmfulness upon Burns ; harassing, 
in the first place, one of the most sensitive minds 
that ever filled a human bosom, and, alas ! by 
consequence, tempting to additional excesses ; — 
impelling one who, under other circumstances, 
might have sought and found far other consolation, 
to seek too often for it 



" In fleeting- mirth, that o'er the bottle lives, 

In the false joy its inspiration g-ives, 

And in associates pleased to find a friend 

With powers to lead them, g-ladden, and defend, 

In all those scenes where transient ease is found 

For minds whom sins oppress, and sorrows wound."* 

The same philosophical poet tells us, that 

" — Wine is like anger, for it makes us strong" ; 

Blind and impatient, and it leads us wrong ; 

The strength is quickly lost, we feel the error long." 

But a short period was destined for the sorrows 
and the errors equally of Burns. 

How he struggled against the tide of his misery, 
let the following letter speak — it was written Feb- 
ruary 25, 1794, and addressed to Mr. Alexander 
Cunningham, an eccentric being, but generous and 

* Crabbe's Edward Shore, a talc, in which the poet has 
obviously had Burns in his view. 
23 



272 LIFE OF 

faithful in his friendship to Burns, and, when 
Burns was no more, to his family. 

"Canst thou minister," says the poet, "to a 
mind diseased? Canst thou speak peace and 
rest to a soul tossed on a sea of troubles, without 
one friendly star to guide her course, and dreading 
that the next surge may overwhelm her ? Canst 
thou give to a frame, tremblingly alive to the tor- 
tures of suspense, the stability and hardihood of 
the rock that braves the blast ? If thou canst not 
do the least of these, why wouldst thou disturb me 
in my miseries, with thy inquiries after me ? 

" For these two months I have not been able to 
lift a pen. My constitution and frame were, ah 
origine, blasted with a deep incurable taint of hy- 
pochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late 
a number of domestic vexations, and some pecuni- 
ary share in the ruin of these ***** times — losses 
which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill 
bear, have so irritated me, that my feelings at 
times could only be envied by a reprobate spirit 
listening to the sentence that dooms it to perdition. 

"Are you deep in the language of consolation ? 
I have exhausted in reflection every topic of com- 
fort. A heart at ease would have been charmed 
with my sentiments and reasonings ; but as to my- 
self, I was like Judas Iscariot preaching the gos- 
pel ; he might melt and mould the hearts of those 
around him, but his own kept its native incorrigi- 
bility. — Still there are two great pillars that bear 
us up, amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. 
The ONE is composed of the different modifications 
of a certain noble, stubborn something in man, 
known by the names of courage, fortitude, magna- 
nimity. The OTHER is made up of those feelings 
and sentiments, which, however the sceptic may 



ROBERT BURNS. 273 

d^ny, or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I 
am convinced, original and component parts of 
the human soul ; those senses of the mind, if I may 
be allowed the expression, which connect us with, 
and link us to, those awful obscure realities — an 
all powerful and equally beneficent God — and 
a world to come, beyond death and the grave. 
The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray 
of hope beams on the field ; — the last pours the 
balm of comfort into the wounds which time can 
never cure. 

"I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that 
you and I ever talked on the subject of religion at 
all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of 
the crafty few, to lead the undiscerning many ; 
or at most as an uncertain obscurity, which man- 
kind can never know any thing of, and with which 
they are fools if they give themselves much to do. 
Nor would I quarrel with a man for his irreligion, 
any more than I would for his want of a musical 
ear. I would regret that he was shut out from 
what, to me and to others, were such superlative 
sources of enjoyment. It is in this point of view, 
and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the 
mind of every child of mine with religion. If my 
son should happen to be a man of feelirig, senti- 
ment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his en- 
joyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet 
little fellow who is just now running about my 
desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing 
heart ; and an imagination,delighted with the paint- 
er, and rapt with the poet. Let me figure him, 
wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the 
balmy gales, and enjoy the growing luxuriance of 
the spring ; himself the while in the bloomhigyouth 
of life. He looks abroad on all nature, and through 



274 LIFE OF 

nature up to nature's God. His soul, by swift, 
delighted degrees, is rapt above this sublunary 
sphere, until he can be silent no longer, and bursts 
out into the glorious enthusiasm of Thomson, 

* These, as they chang-e, Almig-hty Father, these 
Are but the varied God. — The rolling" year 
Is full of thee ;' 

and so on, in all the spirit and ardor of that 
charming hymn. — These are no ideal pleasures ; 
they are real delights ; and I ask what of the de- 
lights among the sons of men are superior, not to 
say, equal to them ? And they have this precious, 
vast addition, that conscious virtue stamps them for 
her own ; and lays hold on them to bring herself 
into the presence of a witnessing, judging, and 
approving God." 

They who have been told that Burns was ever 
a degraded being — whohave permitted themselves 
to believe that his only consolations were those of 
" the opiate guilt applies to grief," will do well to 
pause over this noble letter and judge for them- 
selves. The enemy under which he was des- 
tined to sink, had already beaten in the outworks 
of his constitution when these lines were penned. 

The reader has already had occasion to observe, 
that Burns had in those closing years of his life to 
struggle almost continually with pecuniary diffi- 
culties, than which nothing could have been more 
likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup 
of his existence. His lively imagination exagge- 
rated to itself every real evil ; and this among, and 
perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of his 
letters we find him alluding to the probability of 
his being arrested for debts, which we now know 
to have been of very trivial amount at the worst, 



ROBERT BURNS. 275 

which we also know he himself lived to discharge 
to the utmost farthing, and in regard to which it is 
impossible to doubt that his personal friends in 
Dumfries would have at all times been ready to 
prevent the law taking its ultimate course. This 
last consideration, however, was one which would 
have given slender relief to Burns. How he shrunk 
with horror and loathing from the sense of pecu- 
niary obligation, no matter to whom, we have had 
abundant indications already.* 

The question naturally arises : Burns was all 
this while pouring out his beautful songs for the 
Museum of Johnson and the greater work of Thom- 
son ; how did he happen to derive no pecuniary 
advantages from this continual exertion of his ge- 
nius in a form of composition so eminently calcu- 
lated for popularity ? Nor, indeed, is it an easy 
matter to answer this very obvious question. The 
poet himself, in a letter to Mr. Carfrae, dated 1789, 
speaks thus : " The profits of the labors of a man 
of genius are, I hope, as honorable as any profits 
whatever ; and Mr. Myine's relations are most 
justly entitled to that honest harvest which fato 

* The following' extract from ono of his letters to Mr. Mac- 
murdo, dated December, 1793, will speak for itself: 

" Sir, it is said that we take the greatest liberties with 
our greatest friends, and I pay myself a very hig-h compli- 
ment in the manner in which I am g-oing- to apply the re- 
mark. I have owed you money long-cr than ever I owed it 
to any man. — Here is Ker's account, and here are six g-ui- 
neas; and now, I don't owe a shilling to man, or womau 
either. But for these damned dirty, dog's-eared little pages, 
(Scotch bank-notes,) I had done myself the honor to have 
waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations 
your hospitality has laid me under, the consciousness of 
your superiority in the rank of man and gentleman of itself 
was fully as much as I could ever make head against ; but 
to owe you money too, was more than I could face." 

*23 



176 LIFE OF 

has denied himself to reap." And yet, so far from 
looking to Mr. Johnson for any pecuniary remu- 
neration for the very laborious part he took in his 
work, it appears from a passage in Cromek's Re- 
liques, that the poet asked a single copy of the Mu- 
seum to give to a fair friend, by way of a great fa- 
vor to himself — and that that copy and his own 
were really all he ever received at the hands of the 
publisher. Of the secret history of Johnson and 
his book I know nothing ; but the Correspondence 
of Burns with Mr. Thomson contains curious 
enough details concerning his connection with that 
gentleman's more important undertaking. At the 
outset, September, 1792, we find Mr. Thomson 
saying, " We will esteem your poetical assistance 
a particular favor, besides paying any reasonable 
price you shall please to demand for it. Profit is 
quite a secondary consideration with us, and we 
are resolved to save neither pains nor expense on 
the publication." To which Burns replies immedi- 
ately, " As to any remuneration, you may think 
my songs either above or below price ; for they 
shall absolutely be the one or the other. In the ho- 
nest enthusiasm with which I embark in your un- 
dertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, &€., 
would be downright prostitution of soul. A proof of 
each of the songs that I compose or amend I shall 
receive as a favor. In the rustic phrase of the 
season. Glide speed the icark." The next time we 
meet with any hint as to money matters in the Cor- 
respondence is in a letter of Mr. Thomson, 1st 
July, 1793, where he says, " I cannot express how 
much I am obliged to you for the exquisite new 
songs you are sending me ; but thanks, my friend, 
are a poor return for what you have done : as I 
shall be benefited by the publication, you must 



ROBERT BURNS. 277 

suffer me to inclose a small mark of my gratitude, 
and to repeat it afterward when I find it conve- 
nient. Do not return it, for, by Heaven, if you 
do, our correspondence is at an end." To which 
letter (it inclosed £5) Burns thus replies : — 
" I assure you, my dear sir, that you truly hurt me 
with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in 
my own eyes. However, to return it would sa- 
vor of affectation ; but as to any more traffic of 
that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that ho- 
nor which crowns the upright statue of Robert 
Burns' integrity — on the least motion of it, I will 
indignantly spurn the by-past transaction, and from 
that moment commence entire stranger to you. 
Burns' character for generosity of sentiment and 
independence of mind will, I trust, long outlive 
any of his wants which the cold unfeeling ore can 
supply : at least, I will take care that such a cha- 
racter he shall deserve." — In November, 1794, 
we find Mr. Thomson writing to Burns, " Do not, I 
beseech you, return any books." — In May, 1795, 
" You really make me blush when you tell me 
you have not merited the drawing from me ;" 
(this was a drawing of the Cottar^s Saturday 
Night, by Allan) ; " I do not think I can ever 
repay you, or sufficiently esteem and respect you, 
for the liberal and kind manner in which you have 
entered into the spirit of my undertaking, which 
could not have been perfected without you. So I 
beg you would not make a fool of me again by 
speaking of obligation." On February, 179G, we 
have Burns acknowledging a " handsome elegant 

present to Mrs. B ," which was a worsted 

shawl. Lastly, on the 12th July of the same year, 
(that is, little more than a week before Burns died,) 
he writes to Mr. Thomson in these terms : " Af- 



$^78 LIFE OF 

ter all my boasted independence, cursed necessity 
compels me to implore you for five pounds. A 
cruel ...... of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an 

account, taking it into his head that I am dying, 
has commenced a process, and will infallibly put 
me into jail. Do, for God's sake, send me that 
sum, and that by return of post. Forgive me this 
earnestness ; but the horrors of a jail have put me 
half distracted. — I do not ask this gratuitously ; 
for, upon returning health, I hereby promise and 
engage to furnish you with five pounds worth of 
the neatest song genius you have seen." To which 
Mr. Thomson replies — " Ever since I received 
your melancholy letter by Mrs. Hyslop, I have 
been ruminating in what manner I could endea- 
vor to alleviate your sufferings. Again and again 
1 thought of a pecuniary offer ; but the recollec- 
tion of one of your letters on this subject, and the 
fear of offending your independent spirit, checked 
my resolution. I thank you heartily, therefore, for 
the frankness of your letter of the 12th, and with 
great pleasure inclose a draft for the very sum I 
proposed sending. Would I were Chancellor of 

the Exchequer but one day for your sake ! 

Pray, my good sir, is it not possible for you to 

muster a volume of poetry ? Do not 

shun this method of obtaining the value of your 
labor ; remember Pope published the Iliad by 
subscription. Think of this, my dear Burns, and 
do not think me intrusive with my advice." 

Such are the details of this matter, as recorded 
in the correspondence of the two individuals con- 
cerned. Some time after Burns' death, Mr. Thom- 
son was attacked on account of his behavior to 
the poet, in an anonymous novel, which I have 



ROBERT BURNS. 279 

never seen, called Nuhilia ; in Professor Walker's 
Memoirs, which appeared in 1816, Mr. Thomson 
took the opportunity of defending himself:* and 



* "I have been attacked with much bitterness, and ac- 
cused of not endeavoring to remunerate Burns for the songs 
which he wrote for my collection ; although there is the 
clearest evidence of the contrary, both in the printed cor- 
respondence between the poet and me, and in the public 
testimony of Dr. Currie. My assailant, too, without know- 
ing any thing of the matter, states, that I had enriched my- 
self by the labors of Burns; and of course, that my want 
of generosity was inexcusable. 

"Now, the fact is, that notwithstanding the united .la- 
bors of all the men of genius who have enriched my col- 
lection, I am not even yet compensated for the precious 
time consumed by me in poring over musty volumes, and 
in corresponding with every amateur and poet by whose 
means I expected to make any valuable additions to our 
national music and song ; — for the exertion and money it 
cost me to obtain accompaniments from the greatest masters 
of Harmony in Vienna ; — and for the sums paid to engra- 
vers, printers, and others. On this subject, the testimony 
of Mr. Preston in London, a man of unquestionable and 
well-known character, who has printed the music for every 
copy of my work, may be more satisfactory than anything 
1 can say. In August 1809, he wrote me as follows : 'lam 
concerned at the very unwarrantable attack which has 
been made upon you by the author of Nubilia: nothing 
could be more unjust than to say you had enriched your- 
self by Burns' labors : for the whole concern, though it 
includes the labors of Haydn, has scarcely aftbrded a 
compensation for the various expenses, and for the time 
employed on the work. When a work obtains any cele- 
brity, publishers are generally supposed to derive a profit 
ten times beyond the reality ; the sale is greatly magnified, 
and the expenses are not in the least taken into considera- 
tion. It is truly vexatious to be so grossly and scandalously 
abused for conduct, the very reverse of which has been 
manifest through the whole transaction.' 

"Were I the sordid man that the anonymous author 
calls me, I had a most inviting opportunity to profit much 
more than 1 did by the lyrics of our great bard. He had 
written above fifty songs expressly for my work ; they were 
in my possession unpublished at his death ; I had the right 



LIFE OF 

Professor Walker, who enjoyed the personal friend . 
ship of Burns, and who also appears to have had 
the honor of Mr. Thomson's intimate acquaintance, 
has delivered an opinion on the whole merits of the 
case, which must necessarily be far more satisfac 
lory to the reader than any thing which I could pre- 
sume to offer in its room. "Burns," saysthis writer, 
" had all the unmanageable pride of Samuel John- 
son ; and if the latter threw away, with indigna- 
tion, the new shoes which had been placed at his 
chamber-door secretly and collectively by his com- 
panions, — the former would have been still more 
ready to resent any pecuniary donation with which 
a single individual, after his peremptory prohibi- 
tion, should avowedly have dared to insult him. 



and the power of retaining- them till I should be ready to 
publisli them ; but when I was informed that an edition of 
the poet's works was projected for the benefit of his family, 
I put them in immediate possession of the whole of his 
song's, as well as letters, and thus enabled Dr. Currie to com- 

Elete tlie four volumes which were sold for the family's be- 
oof to Messrs. Cadell and Davies. And I have the satis- 
faction of knowing-, that the most zealous friends of the fa- 
mily, Mr. (/unningham, Mr. Syme, and Dr. Cvirrie, and 
ihe poet's own brother, considered my sacrifice of the prior 
right of publishing the song-s, as no ungrateful return for 
the disinterested and liberal conduct of the poet. Accord- 
ingly, Mr. Gilbert Burns, in a letter to me, which alone 
might suffice for an answer to all the novelist's abuse, thus 
expresses himself: 'If ever I come to Edinburgh, I will cer- 
tainly call on a person whose handsome conduct to my bro- 
ther's family has secured my esteem, and confirmed me in 
the opinion, that musical taste and talents have a close con- 
nection with the harmony of the moral feeling's.' Nothing- 
is farther from my thoughts than to claim any merit for 
what I did, I never would have said a word on the subject, 
but for the harsh and groundless accusation which has been 
brought forward, either by ignorance or animosity, and 
which I have long- suflfered to remain unnoticed^ from my 
g-reat dislike to any public appearance." 



ROBERT ^VlkM. 281 

He would instantly have construed such conduct 
into a virtual assertion that his prohibition was in- 
sincere, and his independence affected ; and the 
more artfully the transaction had been disguised,, 
the more rage it would have excited, as implying 
the same assertion, with the additional charge, that 

if secretly made it would not be denied 

The statement of Mr. Thomson supersedes the 
necessity of any additional remarks. When the 
public is satisfied ; when the relations of Burns are 
grateful ; and, above all, when the delicate mind 
of Mr. Thomson is at peace with itself in contem- 
plating his conduct, there can be no necessity for 
a nameless novelist to contradict them."* 

So far, Mr. Walker : — why Burns, who was of 
opinion, when he wrote his letter to Mr. Carfrae, 
that " no profits are more honorable than those 
of the labors of a man of genius," and whose own 
notions of independence had sustained no shock 
in the receipt of hundreds of pounds from Creech, 
should have spurned the suggestion of pecuniary 
recompense from Mr. Thomson, it is no easy mat- 
ter to explain : nor do I profess to understand why 
Mr.Thomson took so little pains to argue the mat- 
ter in limine with the poet, and convince him, that 
the time which he himself considered as fairly en- 
titled to be paid for by a common bookseller, 
ought of right to be valued and acknowledged on 
similar terms by the editor and proprietor of a 
book containing both songs and music. 

They order these things differently now : a 
living lyric poet whom none will place in a higher 
rank than Burns, has long, it is understood, been 
in the habit of receiving about as much money an- 

* Life prefixed to Morrison's Burns, pp. cviii. cxii. 



282 LIFE OF 

nually for an annual handful of songs, as was ever 
paid to our bard for the whole body of his writings. 

Of the increasing irritability of our poet's tem- 
perament, amidst those troubles, external and in- 
ternal, that preceded his last illness, his letters 
furnish proofs, to dwell on which could only in- 
flict unnecessary pain. Let one example suffice : 
" Sunday closes a period of our curst revenue bu- 
siness, and may probably keep me employed with 
my pen until noon. Fine employment for a poet's 

pen ! Here I sit, altogether Novemberish, ad 

melange of fretfulness and melancholy ; not enough 
of the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other 
to repose me in torpor ; my soul flouncing and 
fluttering round her tenement, like a wild linch, 
caught amid the horrors of winter, and newly thrust 
into a cage. Well, I am persuaded that it was of 
me the Hebrew sage prophesied, when he foretold 
— ' And behold, on whatsoever this man doth set 
his heart, it shall not prosper !' Pray that wisdom 
and bliss be more frequent visitors of R. B." 

Towards the close of 1795 Burns was, as has 
been previously mentioned, employed as an acting 
supervisor of excise. This was apparently a step 
to a permanent situation of that higher and more 
lucrative class ; and from thence, there was every 
reason to believe, the kind patronage of Mr. Gra- 
ham might elevate him yet farther. These hopes, 
however, were mingled and darkened with sorrow. 
For four months of that year his youngest child lin- 
gered through an illness of which every week pro- 
mised to be the last ; and she was finally cut oft* 
when the poet, who had watched her with anxious 
tenderness, was from hoftie on professional busi- 
ness. This was a severe blow, and his own nerves. 



EGBERT BURNS. 283 

though as yet he had not taken any serious alarm 
about his ailments, were ill fitted to withstand it, 

" There had need," he writes to Mrs. Dunlop, 
15th December, " there had much need be many 
pleasures annexed to the states of husband and fa- 
ther, for God knows, they have many peculiar cares. 
I cannot describe to you the anxious, sleepless 
hours these ties frequently give me. I see a train 
of helpless little folks ; me and my exertions alltheir 
stay ; and on what a brittle thread does the life of 
man hang ! If I am nipt off at the command of fate, 
even in all the vigor of manhood as I am, such 
things happen every day — gracious God ! what 
would become of my little flock ! 'Tis here that I 
envy your people of fortune. — A father on his 
death-bed, taking an everlasting leave of his chil- 
dren, has indeed wo enough ; but the man of 
competent fortune leaves his sons and daughters 
independency and friends ; while I — but I shall 
run distracted if I think any longer on the subject." 

To the same lady, on the 29th of the month, he, 
after mentioning his supervisorship, and saying 
that at last his political sins seemed to be forgiven 
him — goes on in this ominous tone — "Whatatran- 
sient business is life ! Very lately I was a boy ; 
but t'other day a young man ; and I already begin 
to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age 
coming fast over my frame." We may trace the 
melancholy sequel in these extracts. 

" Slst January, 1796. — I have lately drunk deep 
of the cup of atHiction. The autumn robbed me 
of my only daughter and darling child, and that 
at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it 
out of my power to pay the last duties to her. 
I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, 
when I became myself the victim of a most severe 
24 



^84 LIFE OF 

rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful ; 
until, after many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to 
have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl 
across my room, and once indeed have been be- 
fore my own door in the street. 

" When pleasure fascinates the mental sig-ht, 

Affliction purifies the visual ray, 
Religion hails the drear tlie untried nig-ht, 

That shuts, for ever shuts ! life's doubtful day." 

But a few days after this. Burns was so exceed- 
ingly imprudent as to join a festive circle at a ta- 
vern dinner, where he remained till about three in 
the morning. The weather was severe, and he, 
being much intoxicated, took no precaution in thus 
exposing his debilitated frame to its influence. It 
has been said, that he fell asleep upon the snow 
on his way home. It is certain, that next morning 
he was sensible of an icy numbness through all 
his joints — that his rheumatism returned with ten- 
fold force upon him — and that from that unhappy 
hour, his mind brooded ominously on the fatal 
issue. The course of medicine to which he sub- 
mitted was violent ; confinement, accustomed as 
he had been to much bodily exercise, preyed mi- 
serably on all his powers ; he drooped visibly, 
and all the hopes of his friends that health would 
return with summer, were destined to disappoint- 
ment. 

"4<A Jwne, 1796.* — I am in such miserable 
health as to be utterly incapable of showing my 
loyalty in any way. Rakt as I am with rheuma- 
tisms, I meet every face with a greeting like that 
of Balak and Balaam, — * Come curse me Jacob ; 
and come defy me Israel.' " 

♦ The birth-day of George III. 



ROBERT BURNS. 2^ 

" 7th July. — I fear the voice of the Bard will 
soon be heard among you no more. — For these 
eight or ten months I have been ailing sometimes 
bed-fast and sometimes not ; but these last three 
months I have been tortured with an excruciating 
rheumatism which has reduced me to nearly the 
last stage. You actually would not know me if 
you saw me — pale, emaciated, and so feeble, as 
occasionally to need help from my chair. — My 
spirits fled! fled! But I can no more on the subject." 

This last letter was addressed to Mr. Cunning- 
ham of Edinburgh, from the small village of 
Brow. on the Solway Frith, about ten miles from 
Dumfries, to which the poet removed about the 
end of June ; " the medical folks," as he says, 
** having told him that his last and only chance 
was bathing, country quarters, and riding." In se- 
parating himself by their advice from his family for 
these purposes, he carried with him a heavy bur- 
den of care. "Thedeuce of the matter," he writes, 
" is this ; when an exciseman is off duty, his sa- 
lary is reduced. What way, in the name of thrift, 
shall I maintain myself and keep a horse in coun- 
try quarters on £35 ?" He implored his friends 
in Edinburgh, to make interest with the board to 
grant him his full salary ; " if they do not, I must 
lay my account with an exit truly en poete — if I 
die not of disease, I must perish with hunger." 
The application was, I believe, successful ; but 
Burns lived not to profit by the indulgence, or the 
justice, of his superiors. 

Mrs. Riddellof Glenriddel, a beautiful and very 
accomplished woman, to whom many of Burns' 
most interesting letters, in the latter years of his 
life, were addressed, happened to be in the neigh- 
borhood of Brow when Burns reached his bathins 



286 LIFE OP 

quarters, and exerted herself to make him as com- 
fortable as circumstances permitted. Having sent 
her carriage for his conveyance, the poet visited 
her on the 5th July ; and she has, in a letter pub- 
lished by Dr. Currie, thus described his appear-* 
ance and conversation on that occasion : 

" I was struck with his appearance on entering 
the room. The stamp of death was impressed on 
his features. He seemed already touchingthe brink 
of eternity. His first salutation was, ' Well, ma- 
dam, have you any commands for the other worldf 
I replied that it seemed a doubtful case which of 
us should be there soonest, and that I hoped he 
would yet live to write my epitaph. (I was then 
in a poor state of health.) He looked in my face 
with an air of great kindness, and expressed his 
concern at seeing me look so ill, with his accus- 
tomed sensibility. At table he ate little or nothing, 
and he complained of having entirely lost the tone 
of his stomach. We had a long and serious conver- 
sation about his present situation, and the approach- 
ing termination of all his earthly prospects. H6 
spoke of his death without any of the ostentation 
of philosophy, but with firmness as well as feel- 
ing — as an event likely to happen very soon, and 
which gave him concern chiefly from leaving his 
four children so young and unprotected, and his 
wife in so interesting a situation — in hourly expec- 
tation of lying-in of a fifth. He mentioned, with 
seeming pride and satisfaction, the promising ge- 
nius of his eldest son, and the flattering marks of 
approbation he had received from his teachers, and 
dwelt particularly on his hopes of that boy's future 
conduct and merit. His anxiety for his family 
seemed to hang heavy upon him, and the more 
perhaps from the reflection that he had not done 



ROBERT BUftNS. SST" 

them all the justice he was so well qualified to do. 
Passing from this subject,he showed great concern 
about the care of his literary fame, and particularly 
the publication of his posthumous works. He said 
he was well aware that his death would occasion 
some noise, and that every scrap of his writing 
would be revived against him to the injury of his 
future reputation ; that letters and verses written 
with unguarded and improper freedom, and which 
he earnestly wished to have buried in oblivion, 
would be handed about by idle vanity or malevo- 
lence, when no dread of his resentment would re- 
strain them, or prevent the censures of shrill- 
tongued malice, or the insidious sarcasms of envy, 
from pouring forth all their venom to blast his fame. 
He lamented that he had written many epigrams 
on persons against whom he entertained no enmity, 
and whose characters he should be sorry to wound; 
and many indifferent poetical pieces, which he 
feared would now, with all their imperfections on 
their head, be thrust upon the world. On this ac- 
count he deeply regretted having deferred to put 
his papers into a state of arrangement, as he was 
now quite incapable of the exertion. — The conver- 
sation was kept up with great evenness and anima- 
tion on his side. I have seldom seen his mind 
greater or more collected. There was frequently 
a considerable degree of vivacity in his sallies, 
and they would probably have had a greater 
share, had not the concern and dejection I could 
not disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he 
seemed not unwilling to indulge. — We parted 
about sun-set on the evening of that day (the 5th 
of July, 1796) ; the next day I saw him again, 
and we parted to meet no more !" 
24* 



288 LIFE OF 

I do not know the exact date of the following : 

To Mrs. Burns. —"Brow, Thursday. — My dear- 
est Love, I delayed writing until I could tell you 
what effect sea-bathing was likely to produce. It 
would be injustice to deny that it has eased my 
pains, and I think has strengthened me ; but my 
appetite is still extremely bad. No flesh nor fish 
can I swallow : porridge and milk are the only 
things I can taste. I am very happy to hear, by 
Miss Jess Lewars, that you are all well. My very 
best and kindest compliments to her and to all the 
children. I will see you on Sunday. Your affec- 
tionate husband, R. B." 

There is a very affecting letter to Gilbert, dated 
the 7th, in which the poet says, "I am dangerously 
ill, and not likely to get better. — God keep my 
wife and children." On the 12th, he wrote the 
letter to Mr. George Thomson, above quoted, re- 
questing £5 ; and, on the same day, he penned 
also the following — the last letter that he ever 
wrote — to his friend Mrs. Dunlop : 

" Madam, I have written you so often, without 
receiving any answer, that I would not trouble yoa 
again, but for the circumstances in which I am. 
An illness which has long hung about me, in all 
probability will speedily send me beyond that 
bourne whence no traveler returns. Your friend- 
ship, with which for many years you honored me, 
was a friendship dearest to my soul. Your conver- 
sation, and especially your correspondence, were 
at once highly entertaining and instructive. With 
what pleasure did I use to break up the seal ! The 
remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor 
palpitating heart. Farewell ! ! ! " 

I give the following anecdote in the words of Mr. 



EGBERT BUR?s'S. 289 

M'Diarmid :* " Rousseau, we all know, when 
dying, wished to be carried into the open air, that 
he might obtain a parting look of the glorious orb 
of day. A night or two before Burns left Brow, 
he drank tea with Mrs. Craig, widow of the mi- 
nister of Ruthwell. His altered appearance ex- 
cited much silent sympathy ; and the evening 
being beautiful, and the sun shining brightly 
through the casement, Miss Craig (now Mrs. Hen- 
ry Duncan), was afraid the hght might be too 
much for him, and rose with the view of letting 
down the window blinds. Burns immediately 
guessed whatshe meant; and, regarding the young 
lady with a look of great benignity, said, 'Thank 
you, my dear, for your kind attention ; but oh, let 
him shine ; he will not shine long for me.' " 

On the 18th, despairing of any benefit from the 
sea, our poet came back to Dumfries. Mr. Allan 
Cunningham, who sav\^ him arrive " visibly 
changed in his looks, being with dilRculty able to 
stand upright, and reach his own door," has given 
a striking picture in one of his essays, of the state 
of popular feeling in the town during the short 
space which intervened between his return and 
his death. — " Dumfries was like a besieged place. 
It was known he was dying, and the anxiety, not 
of the rich and the learned only, but of the me- 
chanics and peasants, exceeded all belief. Where- 
ver two or three people stood together, their talk 
was of Burns, and of him alone. They spoke of 
his history — of his person — of his works — of his 
family — of his fame — and of his untimely and ap- 

* I take the opportunity of once more acknowledging" my 
great obligations to this gentleman, who is, I understand, 
connected by his marriage withkthe family of the poet. 



290 LIFE OF 

proaching fate, with a warmth and an enthusiasm 
which will ever endear Dumfries to my remem- 
brance. All that he said or was saying — the opi- 
nions of the physicians, (and Maxwell was a kind 
and a skillful one,) were eagerly caught up and re- 
ported from street to street, and from house to 
house." 

*' His good humor," Cunningham adds, " was 
unruffled, and his wit never forsook him. He 
looked at one of his fellow. volunteers with a smile, 
as he stood by the bed-side with his eyes wet, and 
said, 'John, don't let the awkward squad fire over 
me.' He repressed with a smile the hopes of his 
friends, and told them he had lived long enough. 
As his life drew near a close, the eager yet deco- 
rous solicitude of his fellow-townsmen increased. 
It is the practice of the young men of Dumfries to 
meet in the streets during the hours of remission 
from labor, and by these means I had an opportu- 
nity of witnessing the general solicitude of all 
ranks and of all ages. His differences with them 
on some important points were forgotten and for- 
given; they thought only of his genius — of the de- 
light his compositions had diffused — and they talk- 
ed of him with the same awe as of some departing 
spirit, whose voice was to gladden them no more."* 

'* A tremor now pervaded his frame," says Dr. 
Currie, on the authority of the physician who at- 
tended him ; " his tongue was parched ; and his 
mind sunk into delirium, when not roused by con- 
versation. On the second and third day the fever 
increased, and his strength diminished." On the 
fourth, July 21st, 1796, Robert Burns died. 

" I went to see him laid out for the grave," 
says Mr. Allan Cunningham ; "several elder peo- 

♦ In the London Mag-azine, 1824. Article, "Robert Burns 
and Lord Byron." 



ROBERT BURNS. 291 

pie were with me. He lay in a plain unadorned 
coffin, with a linen sheet drav/n over his face ; 
and on the bed, and around the body, herbs and 
flowers were thickly strewn, according to the 
usage of the country. He was wasted somewhat 
by long illness ; but death had not increased the 
swarthy hue of his face, which was uncommonly 
dark and deeply marked — his broad and open 
brow was pale and serene, and around it his sable 
hair lay in masses, slightly touched with gray. 
The room where he lay was plain and neat, and 
the simplicity of the poet's humble dwelling press- 
ed the presence of death more closely on the heart 
than if his bier had been embellished by vanity, 
and covered with the blazonry of high ancestry 
and rank. We stood and gazed on him in silence 
for the space of several minutes — we went, and 
others succeeded us — not a whisper was heard. 
This was several days after his death." 

On the 25th of July, the remains of the poet 
were removed to the Trades-hall, where they lay 
in state until next morning. The volunteers of 
Dumfries were determined to inter their illustri- 
ous comrade (as indeed he had anticipated) with 
military honors. The chief persons of the town 
and neighborhood resolved to make part of the 
procession; and not a few traveled from great dis- 
tances to witness the solemnity. The streets were 
lined by the Fencible Infantry of Angus-shire, and 
the cavalry of the Cinque Ports, then quartered at 
Dumfries, whose commander, Lord Hawkesbury, 
(now Earl of Liverpool,) although he had always 
declined a personal introduction to the poet,* offi- 
ciated as one of the chief mourners. " The multi- 
tude who accompanied Burns to the grave, went 

♦ So Mr. Syme has informed Mr. M'Diarmid. 



292 LIFE OF 

Step by step," says Cunningham, " with the chief 
mourners. They might amount to ten or twelve 
thousand. Not a word was heard ... It was an im- 
pressive and mournful sight to see men of all 
ranks and persuasions and opinions mingling as^ 
brothers, and stepping side by side down the 
streets of Dumfries, with the remains of him who 
had sung of their loves and joys and domestic en- 
dearments, with a truth and a tenderness which 
none perhaps have since equaled. I could, in- 
deed, have wished the military part of the proces- 
sion away. The scarlet and gold — the banners 
displayed — the measured step, and the military 
array — with the sounds of martial instruments of 
music, had no share in increasing the solemnity 
of the burial scene ; and had no connection with 
the poet. I looked on it then, and I consider it 
now, as an idle ostentation, a piece of superfluous 
state which might have been spared, more espe- 
cially as his neglected and traduced and insulted 
spirit had experienced no kindness in the body 
from those lofty people who are now proud of 
being numbered as his coevals and countrymen. 

I found myself at the brink of the poet's 

grave, into which he was about to descend for- 
ever. There was a pause among the mourners, 
as if loath to part with his remains ; and when he 
was at last lowered, and the first shovelful of earth 
sounded on his coffin lid, I looked up and saw 
tears on many cheeks where tears were not usual. 
The volunteers justified the fears of their com- 
rade, by three ragged and straggling volleys. The 
earth was heaped up, the green sod laid over him, 
and the multitude stood gazing on the grave for 
some minutes' space, and then melted silently^ 
away. The day was a fine one, the sun was al- 



ROBERT BURNS. 293 

most without a cloud, and not a drop of rain fell 
from dawn to twilight. I notice this, not from 
any concurrence in the common superstition, that 
* happy is the corpse which the rain rains on,' 
but to confute the pious fraud of a religious ma- 
gazine, which made heaven express its wrath, at 
the interment of a profane poet, in thunder, in 
lightning, and in rain." 

During the funeral solemnity, Mrs. Burns was 
seized with the pains of labor, and gave birth to 
a posthumous son, who quickly followed his father 
to the grave. Mr. Cunningham describes the 
appearance of the family, when they at last 
emerged from their home of sorrow : — "A weep- 
ing widow and four helpless sons ; they came in- 
to the streets in their mournings, and public sym- 
pathy was awakened afresh. I shall never for- 
get the looks of his boys, and the compassion 
which they excited. The poet's life had not been 
without errors, and such errors, too, as a wife is 
slow in forgiving ; but he was honored then, and 
is honored now, by the unalienable affection of 
his wife, and the world repays her prudence and 
her love by its regard and esteem." 

There was much talk at the time of a subscrip- 
tion for a monument ; but Mrs. Burns beginning, 
ere long, to suspect that the business was to end 
in talk, covered the grave at her own expense 
with a plain tombstone, inscribed simply with the 
name and age of the poet. In 1813, however, a 
public meeting was held at Dumfries, General 
Dunlop, son to Burns' friend and patroness, being 
in the chair; a subscription was opened, and con- 
tributions flowing in rapidly from all quarters, a 
costly mausoleum was at length erected on the 
most elevated site which the churchyard present- 



294 " LIFE OF 

ed. Thither the remains of the poet were so- 
lemnly transferred* on the 5th June, 1815 ; and 
the spot continues to be visited every year by 
many hundreds of travelers. The structure, 
which is perhaps more gaudy than might have 
been wished, bears this inscription : 

IN AETERIVUBI HONOREM 

ROBERTI BURNS 

rOETARUM CALEDONIAE SUI AEVI LONGE PRINCIPIS 

CUJUS CARMINA EXIMIA PATRIO SERMONE SCRIPTA 

ANIMI MAGIS ARDENTIS VIQUE INGENII 

QUAM ARTE VEL CULTU CONSPICUA 

FACETIIS JUCUNDITATE LEPORE AFFLUENTIA 

OMNIBUS LITERARUM CULTORIBUS SATIS NOTA 

GIVES SUI NECNON PLERIQUE OMNES 

MUSARUM AMANTISSIMI MEMORIAMQUE VIRI 

ARTE POETIOA TAM PRAECLARI FOVENTES 

HOC MAUSOLEUM 

SUPER RELIQUIAS POETATE MORTALES 

EXTRUENDUM CURAVERE 

PRIMUM IIUJUS AEDIFICII LAPIDEM 

GULIELMUS MILLER ARMIGER 

REIPUBLICAE ARCHITECTONICAE APUD SCOTOS 

IN REGIONE AUSTRALI CURIO MAXIMUS PROVINGIALIS 

GEORGIO TERTIO REGNANTE 

GEORGIO WALLIARUM PRINCIPE 

SUMMAM IMPERII PRO PATRE TENENTE 

JOSEPHO GASS ARMIGERO DUMFRISIAE PRAEFECTO 

THOMA F. HUNT LONDINENSI ARCHITECTO 

POSUIT 

NONIS JUNIIS ANNO LUCIS VMDCCCXV 

SALUTIS HUMANAE MDCCCXV.* 

Immediately after the poet's death, a subscrip- 
tion was opened for the benefit of his family ; Mr. 

* The orig-inal tombstone of Burns was sunk under the 
pavement of the mausoleum ; and the grave which first re- 
ceived his remains is now occupied, according" to her own 
dying" request, by a daug-htcr of Mrs. Dunlop. 



ROBERT BURNS. 295^ 

Millerof Dalswinton, Dr. Maxwell, Mr. Syme, Mr. 
Cunningham, and Mr. M'Murdo, becoming trus- 
tees for the application of the money. Many 
names from other parts of Scotland appeared in 
the lists, and not a few from England, especially 
London and Liverpool. Seven hundred pounds 
were in this way collected ; an additional sum was 
forwarded from India ; and the profits of Dr. Cur- 
rie's Life and Edition of Burns were also consi- 
derable. The result has been, that the sons of the 
poet received an excellenteducation, and that Mrs. 
Burns has continued to reside, enjoying a decent 
independence in the house where the poet died, 
situated in what is now, by the authority of the 
Dumfries Magistracy, called Burns' street. 

" Of the (four surviving) sons of the poet," says 
their uncle Gilbert in 1820, " Robert, the eldest, 
is placed as a clerk in the Stamp Office, London," 
(Mr. Burns still remains in that establishment,) 
Francis Wallace, the second, died in 1803 ; Wil- 
liam Nicol, the third, went to Madras in 1811; 
and James Glencairn, the youngest, to Bengal in 
1812, both as cadets in the Honorable Company's 
service." These young gentlemen have all, it is 
believed, conducted themselves through life in a 
manner highly honorable to themselves, and to 
the name which they bear. One of them, (James) 
as soon as his circumstances permitted, settled a 
liberal annuity on his estimable mother, which 
she still survives to enjoy. 

Gilbert Burns, the admirable brother of the 
poet, survived till the 27th of April, 1827. He re- 
moved from Mossgiel, shortly after the death of 
the poet, to a farm in Dumfries-shire, carrying 
with him his aged mother, who died under his 
25 



296 LIFE OP 

roof. At a later period he became factor to the 
noble family of Blantyre, on their estates in East 
Lothian. The pecuniary succors which the poet 
afforded Gilbert Burns, and still more the interest 
excited in his behalf by the account of his per- 
sonal character contained in Currie's Memoir, 
proved of high advantage to him. He trained up 
a large family, six sons and five daughters, and 
bestowed on all his boys what is called a classical 
education. The untimely death of one of these, a 
young man of very promising talents, when on the 
eve of being admitted to holy orders, is supposed 
to have hastened the departure of the venerable 
parent. It should not be omitted, that, on the 
publication of his edition of his brother's works, in 
1819, Gilbert repaid, with interest, the sum which 
the poet advanced to him in 1788. Through life, 
and in death, he maintained and justified the pro- 
mise of his virtuous youth, and seems in all re- 
spects to have resembled his father, of whom 
Murdoch, long after he was no more, wrote in 
language honorable to his own heart : " O for a 
world of men of such dispositions ! I have often 
wished, for the good of mankind, that it were as 
customary to honor and perpetuate the memory 
of those who excel in moral rectitude as it is to 
extol what are called heroic actions : then would 
the mausoleum of the friend of my youth overtop 
and surpass most of those we see in Westminster 
Abbey !" * 

It is pleasing to trace, in all these details, the 
happy influence which our poet's genius has ex- 

* These particulars are taken from an article which ap- 
peared, soon after Mr. Burns' death, in the Dumfries 
Courier, 



ROfiERT BtJRNS. 297 

erted over the destinies of his connections. " In 
the fortunes of his family," says Mr. M'Diarmid,* 
" there are few who do not feel the liveliest inte- 
rest ; and were a register kept of the names, and 
numbers, and characters, of those who from time 
to time visit the humble but decent abode in which 
Burns breathed his last, amid the deepest despond, 
ency for the fate of those who were dearer to him 
than life, and in which his widow is spending tran- 
quilly the evening of her days in the enjoyment 
of a competency, not derived from the bounty of 
the public, but from the honorable exertions of her 
own offspring — the detail, though dry, would be 
pleasing to many, and would weaken, though it 
could not altogether efface, one of the greatest 
stains on the character of our country. Even as 
it is, his name has proved a source of patronage 
to those he left behind him, such as the high and 
the noble cannot always command. Wherever his 
sons wander, at home or abroad, they are regarded 
as the scions of a noble stock, and receive the 
cordial greetings of hundreds who never saw their 
faces before, but who account it a happiness ta 
grasp in friendly pressure the proffered hand in- 
which circulates the blood of Burns. "f 



* Article in the Dumfries Mag-azine, Aug-ust, 1825. 

t Mr, M'Diarmid, in the article above quoted, gives a 
touching- account of the illness and death of one of the daugh- 
ters of Mr. James Glencairn Burns, on her voyage homewards 
from India. At the funeral of this poor child there waa 
witnessed, says he, a most affecting scene. " Officers, pas- 
sengers, and men, were drawn up in regular order on deck ; 
some wore crape round the right arm, others were dressed 
in the deepest mourning; every head was uncovered ; and 
as the lashing of the waves on the sides of the coffin pro- 
claimed that the melancholy ceremony had closed, every- 



298 LIFE OP 

Sic vos non mhis. — The great poet himself, 
whose name is enough to ennoble his children's 
children, was, to the eternal disgrace of his coun- 
try, suffered to live and die in penury, and, as far 
as such a creature could be degraded by any ex- 
ternal circumstances, in degradation. Who can 
open the page of Burns, and remember, without a 
blush, that the author of such verses, the human 
being whose breast glowed with such feelings, was 
doomed to earn mere bread for his children by 
casting up the stock of publicans' cellars, and 
riding over moors and mosses in quest of smug- 
gling stills? The subscription for his Poems was, for 
the time, large and liberal, and perhaps absolves 
the gentry of Scotland as individuals; but that some 
strong movement of indignation did not spread over 
the whole kingdom, when it was known that Ro- 
bert Burns, after being caressed and flattered by 
the noblest and most learned of his countrymen, 
was about to be established as a common gauger 
among the wilds of Nithsdale — and that, after he 
was so established, no interference from a higher 
quarter arrested that unworthy career: — these are 
circumstances which must continue to bear heavil)'- 
on the memory of that generation of Scotsmen, and 
especially of those who then administered the 
public patronage of Scotland. 

In defense, or at least in palliation, of this na- 
tional crime, two false arguments, the one resting 
on facts grossly exaggerated, the other having no 
foundation whatever, either on knowledge or on 

countenance seemed saddened with grief— every eye moist- 
ened witli tears. Not a few of the sailors wepl outright, na- 
tives of Scotland, who, even when far away, had revived 
their recollections of home and youth, by listening' to or re- 
peating the poetry of Burns." 



ROBERT BtKNS. 299* 

wisdom, have been rashly set up, and arrogantly as 
well as ignorantly maintained. To the one, namely, 
that public patronage would have been wrongfully 
bestowed on the poet, because the exciseman was 
a political partisan, it is hoped the details embo- 
died in this narrative have supplied a sufficient an- 
swer : had the matter been as bad as the boldest 
critics have ever ventured to insinuate. Sir Walter 
Scott's answer would still have remained — " this^ 
partisan was Burns." The other argument is a 
still more heartless as well as absurd one ; to wit, 
that from the moral character and habits of the 
man, no patronage, however liberal, could have in- 
fluenced and controlled his conduct, so as to work 
lasting and effective improvement, and lengthen 
his life by raising it more nearly to the elevation, 
of his genius. This is indeed a candid and a gene- 
rous method of judging ! Are imprudence and in- 
temperance, then, found to increase usually in 
proportion as the worldly circumstances of men 
are easy ? Is not the very opposite of this doctrine 
acknowledged by almost all that have ever tried the 
reverses of Fortune's wheel themselves — by all 
that have contemplated, from an elevation not too 
high for sympathy, the usual course of manners, 
when their fellow-creatures either encounter or 
live in constant apprehension of 

" The thousand ills that rise where money fails, 
Debts, threats, and duns, bills, bailiffs, writs, and jails V 

To such mean miseries the latter years of Burns' 
life were exposed, not less than his early youth, 
and after what natural buoyancy of animal spirits 
he ever possessed, had sunk under the influence 
of time, which, surely bringing experience, fails 
seldom to bring care also and sorrow, to spi- 
25* 



300 LIFE OF 

rits more mercurial than his ; and in what bitter- 
ness of heart he submitted to his fate, let his own 
burning words once more tell us. " Take," says 
he, writing to one who never ceased to be his 
friend — " take these two guineas, and place them 
over against that ****** account of yours, which 
has gagged my mouth these five or six months ! 
I can as little write good things as apologies to the 
man I owe money to. O, the supreme curse of 
making three guineas do the business of five ! Po- 
verty ! thou half sister of death, thou cousin-ger- 
man of hell ! Oppressed by thee, the man of sen- 
timent, whose heart glows with independence, and 
melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect, 
or writhes in bitterness of soul, under the contume- 
ly of arrogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by 
thee, the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition 
plants him at the tables of the fashionable and po- 
lite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark ne- 
glected, and his person despised, while shallow 
greatness, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet 
with countenance and applause. Nor is it only 
the family of worth that have reason to complain 
of thee ; the children of folly and vice, though, in 
common with thee, the offspring of evil, smart 
equally under thy rod. The man of unfortunate 
disposition and neglected education, is condemned 
as a fool for his dissipation, despised and shunned 
as a needy wretch, when his follies, as usual, bring 
him to want ; and when his necessities drive him 
to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a miscre- 
ant, and perishes by the justice of his country. 
But far otherwise is the lot of the man of family 
and fortune. His early follies and extravagance, 
are spirit and fire ; his consequent wants, are the 
embarrassments of an honest fellow ; and when, to 



ROBKllT BURNS. 301 

remedy the matter, he has gained a legal commis- 
sion to plunder distant provinces, or massacre 
peaceful nations, he returns, perhaps, laden with 
the spoils of rapine and murder ; lives wicked 
and respected, and dies a '^-****** and a lord. — 
Nay, worst of all, alas for helpless woman ! the 
needy prostitute, who has shivered at the corner 
of the street, waiting to earn the wages of casual 
prostitution, is left neglected and insulted, ridden 
down by the chariot wheels of the coroneted rip, 
hurrying on to the guilt}' assignation ; she, who, 
without the same necessities to plead, riots nightly 
in the same guilty trade. V/ell ! divines may 
say of it what they please, but execration is to 
the mind, what phlebotomy is to the body ; the 
vital sluices of both are wonderfully relieved by 
their respective evacuations."* 

In such evacuations of indignant spleen the 
proud heart of many an unfortunate genius, be- 
sides this, has found or sought relief: and to 
other more dangerous indulgences, the affliction 
of such sensitive spirits had often, ere his time, 
condescended. The list is a long and a painful 
one ; and it includes some names that can claim 
but a scanty share in the apology of Burns. Ad- 
dison, himself, the elegant, the philosophical, the 
religious Addison, must be numbered with these 
offenders : Jonson, Cotton, Prior, Parnell, Otway, 
Savage, all sinned in the same sort, and the trans- 
gressions of them all have been leniently dealt 
with, in comparison with those of one whose 
genius was probably greater than any of theirs ; 
his appetites more fervid, his temptations more 
abundant, his repentance more severe. The 

* Letter to Mr. Peter Hill, bookseller, Edinburgh. Gene- 
ral Correspondence, p. 328. 



302 LIFE OF 

beautiful genius of Collins sunk under similar 
contaminations ; and those who have from dull- 
ness of head, or sourness of heart, joined in the 
too general clamor against Burns, may learn a 
lesson of candor, of mercy, and of justice, from 
the language in which one of the best of men, 
and loftiest of moralists, has commented on frail- 
ties that hurried a kindred spirit to a like untime- 
ly grave. 

*' In a long continuance of poverty, and long ha- 
bits of dissipation," says Johnson, "it cannot be 
expected that any character should be exactly 
uniform. — That this man, wise and virtuous as he 
was, passed always unentangled through the 
snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity 
to affirm : but it may be said that he at least pre- 
served the source of action unpolluted, that his 
principles were never shaken, that his distinctions 
of right and wrong were never confounded, and 
that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, 
but proceeded from some unexpected pressure or 
.casual temptation. Such was the fate of Collins, 
with whom I once delighted to converse, and 
whom I yet remember with tenderness." 

Burns was an honest man : after all his strug- 
gles, he owed no man a shilling when he died. 
His heart was always warm and his hand open. 
" His charities," says Mr. Gray, **were great be- 
yond his means ;" and I have to thank Mr. Allan 
Cunningham for the following anecdote, for which 
I am sure every reader will thank him too. Mr. 
j^axwell of Teraughty, an old, austere, sarcastic 
gentleman, who cared nothing about poetry, used 
to say when the excise -books of the district were 
produced at the meetings of the justices, — " Bring 
me Burns' journal : it always does me good to 



ROBERT BURNS. 303 

see it, for it shows that an honest officer may 
carry a kind heart about with him.-" 

Of his rehgious principles, we are bound to 
judge by what he has tola us himself in his more 
serious moments. He sometimes doubted with 
the sorrow, what in the main, and above all, in 
the end, he believed with the fervor, of a poet. 
" It occasionally haunts me," says he in one of 
his letters, — " the dark suspicion, that immortality 
may be only too good news to be true ;" and 
here, as on many points besides, how much did 
his method of thinking, (I fear I must add of act- 
ing,) resemble that of a noble poet more recent- 
ly lost to us. "I am no bigot to infidelity," said 
Lord Byron, " and did not expect that because I 
doubted the immortality of man, I should be 
charged with denying the existence of a God. It 
was the comparative insignificance of ourselves 
and our world, when placed in comparison with 
the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that 
first led me to imagine that our pretensions to 
immortality might be overrated." I dare not 
pretend to quote the sequel from memory, but the 
effect was, that Byron, like Burns, complained of 
" the early discipline of Scotch Calvinism," and 
the natural gloom of a melancholy heart, as hav- 
ing between them engendered " a hypochondri- 
acal disease,''^ which occasionally visited and de- 
pressed him through life. In the opposite scale, 
we are, in justice to Burns, to place many pages 
which breathe the ardor, nay the exultation of 
faith, and the humble sincerity of Christian hope ; 
and as the poet himself has warned us, it well be- 
fits us " at the balance to be mute." Let us 
avoid, in the name of religion herself, the fatal 
error of those who would rashly swell the cata- 



304 LIFE OF 

logue of the enemies of religion. " A sally of 
levity," says, once more, Dr. Johnson, " an inde- 
cent jest, an unreasonable objection, are sufficient, 
in the opinion of some men, to efface a name from 
the lists of Christianity, to exclude a soul from 
everlasting life. Such men are so watchful to 
censure, that they have seldom much care to look 
for favorable interpretations of ambiguities, or to 
know how soon any step of inadvertency has been 
expiated by sorrow and retractation, but let fly 
their fulminations without mercy or prudence 
against slight offenses or casual temerities, against 
crimes never committed, or immediately repented. 
The zealot should recollect, that he is laboring, 
by this frequency of excommunication, against 
his own cause, and voluntarily adding strength 
to the enemies of truth. It must always be the 
condition of a great part of mankind, to reject 
and embrace tenets upon the authority of those 
whom they think wiser than themselves, and 
therefore the addition of every name to infidelity, 
in some degree invalidates that argument upon 
which the religion of multitudes is necessarily^ 
founded,"* In conclusion, let me adopt the sen- 
timent of that illustrious moral poet of our own 
time, whose generous defence of Burns will be 
remembered while the language lasts ;— ^ 



" Let no mean hope your souls enslave— 
Be independent, g-encrous, brave ; 
Your" Poet "such example g-ave^ 

And such revere. 
But be admonisli'd by his grave, 

And think and fear."t 

♦ Life of Sir Thomas Browne. 

t Wordsworth's address to tho sons of Burns, on visiting" 
hiai^grave in 1803. 



nOBERT BUENS. 305 

It is possible, perhaps for some it may be easy, 
to imagine a character of a much higher cast than 
tiiat of Burns, developed, too, under circumstancets 
in many respects not unlike those of his history — 
the character of a man of lowly birth and power- 
ful genius, elevated by that philosophy which is 
alone pure and divine, far above all those annoy- 
ances of terrestrial spleen and passion, which 
mixed from the beginning with the workings of his 
inspiration, and in the end were able to eat deep 
into the great heart which they had long tormented. 
Such a being would have received, no question, a 
species of devout reverence, I mean when the 
grave had closed on him, to which the warmest 
admirers of our poet can advance no pretensions 
for their unfortunate favorite ; but could such a 
being have delighted his species — could he even 
have instructed them like Burns ? Ought we not 
to be thankful for every new variety of form and 
circumstance, in and under which the ennobling 
energies of true and lofty genius are found ad- 
dressing themselves to the common brethren of 
the race ? Would we have none but Miltons and 
Cowpers in poetry — but Brownes and Southeys in 
prose ? Alas ! if it were so, to how large a portion 
of the species would all the gifts of all the muses 
remain for ever a fountain shut up and a book 
sealed ! Were the doctrine of intellectual excom- 
munication to be thus expounded and enforced, 
how small the library that would remain to kin^ 
die the fancy, to draw out and refine the feelings, 
to enlighten the head by expanding the heart of 
man ! From Aristophanes to Byron, how broad 
the sweep, how woful the desolation ! 

In the absence of that vehement sympathy with 
humanity as it is, its sorrows and its joys aa they' 



306 LIFE OF 

are, we might have had a great man, perhaps a 
great poet, but we could have had no Burns. It 
is very noble to despise the accidents of fortune ; 
but what moral homily concerning these, could 
have equaled that which Burns' poetry, consi- 
dered alongside of Burns' history, and the his- 
tory of his fame, presents ! It is very noble to be 
above the allurements of pleasure ; but who 
preaches so effectually against them, as he who 
sets forth in immortal verse his own intense sym- 
pathy with those that yield, and in verse and in 
prose, in action and in passion, in life and in death, 
the dangers and the miseries of yielding ? 

It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than 
falls to the share of most men, to declaim against 
Burns' sensibility to the tangible cares and toils 
of his earthly condition ; there are more who 
venture on broad denunciations of his sympathy 
with the joys of sense and passion. To these, 
the great moral poet already quoted speaks in the 
following noble passage — and must ho speak in 
vain 1 " Permit me," says he, " to remind you, 
that it is the privilege of poetic genius to catch, 
under certain restrictions of which perhaps at the 
time of its being exerted it is but dimly conscious, 
a spirit of pleasure wherever it can be found, — in 
the walks of nature, and in the business of men. 
The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates 
among the felicities of love and wine, and is en- 
raptured while he describes the fairer aspects of 
war ; nor does he shrink from the company of the 
passion of love though immoderate — from convi- 
vial pleasure though intemperate — nor from the 
presence of war though savage, and recognized as 
the handmaid of desolation. Frequently and ad- 
mirably has Burns given way to these impulses of 



ROBERT BURNS. 307 

nature ; both with reference to himself, and in 
describing the condition of others. Who, but 
some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded pu- 
ritan in works of art, ever read without delight 
the picture which he has drawn of the convivial 
exaltation of the rustic adventurer. Tarn o'Shan- 
ter ? The poet fears not to tell the reader in the 
outset, that his hero was a desperate and sottish 
drunkard, whose excesses were frequent as his 
opportunities. This reprobate sits down to his 
cups, while the storm is roaring, and heaven and 
earth are in confusion ; — the night is driven on by- 
song and tumultuous noise — laughter and jest 
tliicken as the beverage improves upon the palate 
— conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of 
general benevolence — selfishness is not absent, 
but wearing the mask of social cordiality — and, 
while these various elements of humanity are 
blended into one proud and happy composition of 
elated spirits, the anger of the tempest without 
doors only heightens and sets off the enjoyment 
within. I pity him who cannot perceive that, in 
all this, though there was no moral purpose, there 
is a moral effect. 

'' King's may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills of life victorious." 

*' What a lesson do these words convey of chari- 
table indulgence for the vicious habits of the prin- 
cipal actor in this scene, and of those who resem- 
ble him ! — Men who to the rigidly virtuous are 
objects almost of loathing, and whom therefore 
they cannot serve ! The poet, penetrating the 
unsightly and disgusting surfaces of things, has 
unveiled with exquisite skill the finer ties of ima- 
gination and feeling, that often bind these beings 
26 



308 LIFE OP 

to practices productive of much unhappiness to 
themselves, and to those whom it is their duty to 
cherish ; and, as far as he puts the reader into 
possession of this inteUigent sympathy, he quali- 
fies him for exercising a salutary influence over 
the minds of those who are thus deplorably de- 
ceived."* 

That some men in every age will comfort them- 
selves in the practice of certain vices, by refer- 
ence to particular passages both in the history 
and in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to 
fear ; but surely the general influence of both is 
calculated, and has been found, to produce far 
different effects. The universal popularity which 
his writings have all along enjoyed among one of 
the most virtuous of nations, is of itself, as it would 
seem, a decisive circumstance. Search Scotland 
over, from the Pentland to the Solway, and there 
is not a cottage-hut so poor and wretched as to be 
without its Bible ; and hardly one that, on the same 
shelf, and next to it, does not possess a Burns. 
Have the people degenerated since their adoption 
of this new manual ? Has their attachment to the 
Book of Books declined ? Are their hearts less 
firmly bound, than were their fathers', to the old 
faith and the old virtues 1 I believe, he that knows 
the most of the country will be the readiest to 
answer all these questions, as every lover of genius 
and virtue would desire to hear them answered. 

On one point there can be no controversy ; the 
poetry of Burns has had most powerful influence 
in reviving and strengthening the national feelings 
of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labor, 
his youth fed on the old minstrelsy and traditional 

* Wordsworth's Letter to Gray, page 24.. 



ROBERT BURNS. 3011 

glories of his nation, and his genius divined, that 
what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that 
might lie smothered around him, but could not 
be extinguished. The political circumstances of 
Scotland were, and had been, such as to starve 
the flame of patriotism ; the popular literature had 
striven, and not in vain, to make itself English ; 
and, above all, a new and a cold system of specu- 
lative philosophy had begun to spread widely 
among us. A peasant appeared, and set himself to 
check the creeping pestilence of this indifference. 
Whatever genius has since then been devoted to 
the illustration of the national manners, and sus- 
taining thereby of the national feelings of the peo- 
ple, there can be no doubt that Burns will ever be 
remembered as the founder, and, alas ! in his own 
person as the martyr, of this reformation. 

That what is now-a-days called, by solitary emi- 
nence, the icealili of the nation, had been on the 
increase eversince our incorporation with a greater 
and wealthier state — nay, that the laws had been 
improving, and, above all, the administration of 
the laws, it would be mere bigotry to dispute. It 
may also be conceded easily, that the national 
mind had been rapidly clearing itself of many in- 
jurious prejudices — that the people, as a people, 
had been gradually and surely advancing in know- 
ledge and wisdom, as well as in wealth and secu- 
rity. But all this good had not been accomplished 
without rude work. If the improvement were 
valuable, it had been purchased dearly, " The 
spring fire," Allan Cunningham says beautifully 
somewhere, " which destroys the furze, makes an 
end also of the nests of a thousand song-birds ; 
and he who goes a-trouting with lime leaves little 
of life in the stream." We were getting fast 



310 LIFE OP 

ashamed of many precious and beautiful things, 
only for that they were old and our own. 

It has already been remarked, how even Smol- 
lett, who began with a national tragedy, and one 
of the noblest of national lyrics, never dared to 
make use of the dialect of his own country; and 
how Moore, another most enthusiastic Scotsman, 
followed in this respect, as in others, the example 
of Smollett, and over and over again counselled 
Burns to do the like. But a still more striking sign 
of the times is to be found in the style adopted by 
both of these novelists, especially the great master 
of the art, in their representations of the manners 
and characters of their own countrymen. In Hum- 
phry Clinker, the last and best of Smollett's tales, 
there are some traits of a better kind — but, taking 
his works as a whole, the impression it conveys is 
certainly a painful, a disgusting one. The Scots- 
men of these authors, are the Jockeys and Archies 
of farce — 

Time out of mind the Southrons' mirthmakers — 

the best of them grotesque combinations of sim- 
plicity and hypocrisy, pride and meanness. When 
such men, high-spirited Scottish gentlemen, pos- 
sessed of learning and talents, and one of them 
at least, of splendid genius, felt, or fancied, the 
necessity of making such submissions to the pre- 
judices of the dominant nation, and did so without 
exciting a murmur among their own countrymen, 
we may form some notion of the boldness of 
Burns' experiment ; and on contrasting the state 
of things then with what is before us now, it will 
cost no effort to appreciate the nature and conse- 
quences of the victory in which our poet led the 
way, by achievements never in their kind to be 



EOBEllT BURNS. 31 1 

surpassed.* " Burns," says Mr. Campbell, " has 
given the elixir vitae to his dialect :"f — -he gave it 
to more than his dialect. 

The moral influence of his genius has not been 
confined to his own countrymen. " The range 
o£ the pastoi'al" said Johnson, "is narrow. Poet- 
ry cannot dwell upon the minuter distinctions by 
which one species differs from another, without 
departing from that simplicity of grandeur which 
Jills the imagination ; nor dissect the latent quali- 
ties of things, without losing its general power of 
gratifying every mind by recalling its own concep. 
tions. Not only the images of rural life, but the 
occasions on which they can be properly applied, 
are few and general. The state of a man con- 
lined to the employments and pleasures of the 
country is so little diversified, and exposed to so 
{ew of those accidents which produce perplexi- 
ties, terrors, and surprises, in more complicated 
transactions, that he can be shown but seldom in 

* " He was," says a writer, in whose lang-uag-e a brother 
poet will be recog-nized — " he was in many respects born at 
a happy time ; happy for a man of g-enius like him, but fatal 
and hopeless to the more common mind. A whole world of 
life lay before Burns, whose inmost recesses, and darkest 
nooks, and sunniest eminences, he had familiarly trodden 
from his childhood. All that world he felt could be made his 
own. No conqueror had overrun its fertile provinces, and it 
was for him to be crowned supreme over all the 

' Lyric singers of that high-soul'd land.' 

The crown that he has won can never be removed from 
his head. Much is yet left for other poets, even among" that 
life where his spirit delig-hted to work ; but he has built mo- 
numents on all the high places, and they who follow can only 
hope to leave behind them some far humber memorials." — 
Blcakxcoods Magazine, Feb. 1817. 
■f Specimens of the British Poets, vol. vii. p. 240. 

26* 



312 LIFE O^ 

such circumstances as attract curiosity. His 
ambition is without poUcy, and his love without 
intrigue. He has no complaints to make of his 
rival, but that he is richer than himself; nor any 
disasters to lament, but a cruel mistress or a bad 
harvest."* Such were the notions of the great 
arbiter of taste, whose dicta formed the creed of 
the British world, at the time when Burns made 
his appearance to overturn all such dogmata at a 
single blow ; to convince the loftiest of the noble, 
and the daintiest of the learned, that wherever 
human nature is at work, the eye of a poet may 
discover rich elements of his art — that over Chris- 
tian Europe, at all events, the purity of sentiment 
and the fervor of passion may be found combined 
with sagacity of intellect, wit, shrewdness, humor, 
whatever elevates and whatever delights the 
mind, not more easily amidst the most " compli- 
cated transactions" of the most polished societies, 
than 

" In huts where poor men lie." 

Burns did not place himself only within the es- 
timation and admiration of those whom the world 
called his superiors — a solitary tree emerging into 
light and air, and leaving the parent underwood as 
low and as dark as before. He, as well as any 
man, 

" Knew his own worth, and reverenced the lyre ;"t 

* Rambler, No. 36, 

t Perhaps some readers will smile to hear, that Burns very 
often wrote his name on his books thus — "Robert Burns, 
Poet ;" and that Allan Cunningham remembers a favorite 
collie at EUiesland having the same inscription on his 
collar. 



EGBERT BURNS. 313 

but he ever announced himself as a peasant, the 
representative of his class, the painter of their 
manners, inspired by the same influences which 
ruled their bosoms ; and whosoever sympathized 
with the verse of Burns, had his soul opened for 
the moment to the whole family of man. If, in 
too many instances, the matter has stopped there 
— the blame is not with the poet, but with the mad 
and unconquerable pride and coldness of the 
worldly heart — " man's inhumanity to man." If, 
in spite of Burns, and all his successors, the boun- 
dary lines of society are observed with increasing 
strictness among us — if the various orders of men 
still, day by day, feel the chord of sympathy re- 
laxing, let us lament over symptoms of a disease in 
the body politic, which, if it goes on, must find 
sooner or later a fatal ending : but let us not un- 
dervalue the antidote whichhas all along beencheck- 
ing this strong poison. Who can doubt that at this 
moment thousands of " the first-born of Egypt " 
look upon the smoke of a cottager's chimney with 
feelings which would never have been developed 
within their being, had there been no Burns 1 

Such, it can hardly be disputed, has been and is 
the general influence of this poet's genius ; and 
the effect has been accomplished, not in spite of, 
but by means of the most exact contradiction of, 
every one of the principles laid down by Dr. 
Johnson in a passage already cited ; and, indeed, 
assumed throughout the whole body of that great 
author's critical disquisitions. Whatever Burns has 
done, he has done by his exquisite power of entering 
into the characters and feelings of individuals, as 
Heron has well expressed it, " by the effusion of 
particular, not general sentiments, and in the pic- 
turing out of particular imagery." 



314 tIPE OF 

Dr. Currie says, that " if fiction be the soul of 
poetry, as some assert, Burns can have small pre- 
tensions to the name of poet. The success of 
Burns, the influence of his verse, would alone be 
enough to overturn all the systems of a thousand 
definers ; but the Doctor has obviously taken^c- 
iion in far too limited a sense. There are indeed 
but few of Burns' pieces in which he is found 
creating beings and circumstances, both alike alien 
from his own person and experience, and then by 
the power of imagination, divining and expressing 
what forms life and passion would assume with, 
and under these — But there are some ; there is 
qite enough to satisfy every reader of Hallowe'en, 
the Jolly Beggars, and Tam o' Slianter, (to say 
nothing of various particular songs, such as 
Bruce' s Address, Macpher son's Lament, dec.) that 
Burns, if he pleased, might have been as largely 
and as successfully an inventor in this way, as he 
is in another walk, perhaps not so inferior to this 
as many people may have accustomed themselves 
to believe ; in the art, namely, of recombining and 
new-combining, varying, embellishing, and fixing 
and transmitting the elements of a most pictu- 
resque experience, and most vivid feelings. 

Lord Byron, in his letter on Pope, treats with 
high and just contempt the laborious trifling which 
has been expended on distinguishing by air-drawn 
lines and technical slang-words, the elements and 
materials of poetical exertion ; and, among other 
things, expresses his scorn of the attempts that 
have been made to class Burns among minor poets, 
merely because he has put forth few large pieces, 
and still fewer of what is called the purely imagi- 
native character. Fight who will about words and 
forms, " Burns' rank," says he, "is in the first 



ROBERT BURNS, 315 

class of his art ;" and I believe the world at large 
are now-a-days well prepared to prefer a line from 
such a pen as Byron's on any such subject as this, 
to the most luculent dissertation that ever per- 
plexed the brains of writer and of reader. Sentio 
ergo sum, says the metaphysician ; the critic may 
safely parody the saying, and assert that that is 
poetry of the highest order, which exerts influence 
of the most powerful order -. the hearts and minds 
of mankind. 

Burns has been appreciated duly, and he has 
had the fortune to be praised eloquently, by almost 
every poet who has come after him. To accumu- 
late all that has been said of him, even by men 
like himself, of the first order, would fill a volume — 
and a noble monument, no question, that volume 
would be — the noblest, except what he has left us 
in his own immortal verses, which — were some 
dross removed, and the rest arranged in a chrono- 
logical order — would I believe form, to the intel- 
ligent, a more perfect and vivid history of his hfe 
than will ever be composed out of all the materials 
in the world besides. 

" The impression of his genius," says Campbell, 
" is deep and universal ; and viewing him merely 
as a poet, there is scarcely another regret con- 
nected with his name, than that his productions, 
with all their merit, fall short of the talents which 
he possessed. That he never attempted any great 
work of fiction, may be partly traced to the cast 
of his genius, and partly to his circumstances, and 
defective education. His poetical temperament 
was that of fitful transports, rather than steady in- 
spiration. Whatever he might have written, was 
likely to have been fraught with passion. There 
is always enough of interest in life to cherish the 



316 LIFE OF 

feelings of genius ; but it requires knowledge to 
enlarge and enrich the imagination. Of that know- 
ledge, which unrolls the diversities of human man- 
ners, adventures, and characters, to a poet's study, 
he could have no great share; although he stamped 
the little treasure which he possessed in the mint- 
age of sovereign genius."* 

"Notwithstanding," says Sir Walter Scott, " the 
spirit of many of his lyrics, and the exquisite sweet- 
ness and simplicity of others, we cannot but deeply 
regret that so much of his time and talents was 
frittered away in compiling and composing for 
musical collections. There is sufficient evidence, 
that even the genius of Burns could not support 
him in the monotonous task of writing love verses, 
on heaving bosoms and sparkling eyes, and twist- 
ing them into such rhymaticai forms as might suit 
the capricious evolutions of Scotch reels and 
strathspeys. Besides, this constant waste of his 
power and fancy in small and insignificant compo- 
sitions, must necessarily have had no little effect 
in deterring him from undertaking any grave or 
important task. Let no one suppose that we un- 
dervalue the songs of Burns. When his soul 
was intent on suiting a favorite air to words 
humorous or tender, as the subject demanded, 
no poet of our tongue ever displayed higher skill 
in marrying melody to immortal verse. But the 
writing of a series of songs for large musical col- 
lections, degenerated into a slavish labor which 
no talents could support, led to negligence, and, 
above all, diverted the poet from his grand plan 
of dramatic composition. To produce a work 
of this kind, neither, perhaps, a regular tragedy 

* Specimens, vol. vii. p. 241. 



EGBERT BURNS. 317 

nor comedy, but something partaking of the nature 
of both, seems to have been long the cherished 
wish of Burns. He had even fixed on the sub- 
ject, which was an adventure in low life, said to 
have happened to Robert Bruce, while wandering 
in danger and disguise, after being defeated by 
the English. The Scottish dialect would have 
rendered such a piece totally unfit for the stage; 
but those who recollect the masculine and lofty 
tone of martial spirit which glows in the poem of 
Bannockburn, will sigh to think what the character 
of the gallant Bruce might have proved under the 
hand of Burns. It would undoubtedly have want- 
ed that tinge of chivalrous feeling which the man- 
ners of the age, no less than the disposition of the 
monarch, demanded ; but this deficiency would 
have been more than supplied by a bard who 
could have drawn from his own perceptions the 
unbending energy of a hero sustaining the deser- 
tion of friends, the persecution of enemies, and the 
utmost malice of disastrous fortune. The scene, 
too, being partly laid in humble life, admitted that 
display of broad humor and exquisite pathos, with 
which he could, interchahgeably and at pleasure, 
adorn his cottage views. Nor was the assemblage 
of familiar sentiments incompatible in Burns, with 
those of the most exalted dignity. In the inimi- 
table tale of Tarn o' Shanter, he has left us sufli- 
cient evidence of his abilities to combine the ludi- 
crous with the awful, and even the horrible. No 
poet, with the exception of Shakspeare, ever pos- 
sessed the power of exciting the most varied and 
discordant emotions with such rapid transitions. 
His humorous description of death in the poem 
on Dr. Hornhook borders on the terrific, and the 
witches' dance in the kirk of Alloway is at once 



318 LIFE OF 

ludicrous and horrible. Deeply must we then re- 
gret those avocations which diverted a fancy so 
varied and so vigorous, joined with language and 
expression suited to all its changes, from leaving 
a more substantial monument to his own fame, 
and to the honor of his country."* 

The cantata of the Jolly Beggars, which was 
not printed at all until some time after the poet's 
death, and has not been included in the editions of 
his works until within these few years, cannot be 
considered as it deserves, without strongly height- 
ening our regret that Burns never lived to exe- 
cute his meditated drama. That extraordinary 
sketch, coupled with his later lyrics in a higher 
vein, is enough to show that in him we had a mas- 
ter capable of placing the musical drama on a 
level with the loftiest of our classical forms. 
Beggar^s Bush and Beggar^s Opera, sink into 
tameness in the comparison ; and indeed, without 
profanity to the name of Shakspeare, it may be 
said, that out of such materials, even his genius 
could hardly have constructed a piece in which 
imagination could have more splendidly predomi- 
nated over the outward shows of things — in which 
the sympathy-awakening power of poetry could 
have been displayed more triumphantly under 
circumstances of the greatest difficulty. That 
remarkable performance, by the way, was an 
early production of the Mauchline period;! I 
know nothing but the Tarn o' Shanter that is cal- 
culated to convey so high an impression of what 
Burns might have done. 

* Quarterly Review, No. 1. p. 33. 

t So John Richmond of Mauchline informed Chambers 
—see the "Picture of Scotland," article Mauchline, for 
some entertaining particulars of the scene that suggested 
the poem. 



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